Last night, my friend, Karl, and I were in the throws of a huge discussion about race in America and class in the West Indies (with specific reference to shade of skin in Jamaica) and Gayness everywhere we go and how that affects how we identify in foreign countries and how we do not identify with much when we are home and why?

To explain we began with how in Jamaica, I have to work very hard to be valid in my Blackness. There, my skin is too fair for me to be unequivocally Black in a world where we do not so much have racism as we do "shade-ism." So if you are not dark skinned, you cannot claim blackness.

In a Brittish post-colonial world without gold or diamonds, (or the once thriving coffee, banana, or aluminium industries) we have long since seen the backs of our "white plantation owners." That is to say, they left, but the philosophies they implemented stayed. So the "next to white class" rose up to rule in their stead.

Hence, the set-up of the hierarchy of power based on shade, not race- though one could argue that in this case, race and shade are one and the same, it is now about the quantity of race, based on a phenotype. What hue of dark and light you are, and not Race itself, was used as a judgment of value. Here the "one drop rule" (of blood) is applied but in direct opposite of what the norm in America and the Caribbean had been for years.

I must apologise for the convoluted and essay language that permeates today's entry, but I was so excited by the discussion, that the new day finds me ruminating on these horrible, but pressing questions.

So in Jamaica, I cannot (not in your "regular-black panther-fight-the-power-kind of way) claim any black voice or agitate on the basis of color, or race, or shade. Because, even though along the polar continuum of Black and White, I am more Black than I will ever be white, the fact is, I am fair enough ( ie.. close enough to the white complexion (being half chinese) for me to be categorised- or at least afforded the privilege of "shaded whiteness" in Jamaica.

[Never mind the discussion I had with an interviewer earlier in the evening about how Chinese I feel and what that means in a world which sees me as Black.]

So here I come out being lesbian in a culture which does not even have the PC language to define homosexuality. This is so far off the beaten track of discrimination- so utterly non-existent except in brutal descriptions of beatings and killings in our music- that people are perplexed and amazed and outraged by what I did not know to be my coming out experience- and worse I was insisting on conversations that acknowledge this, and pressed for explanations on why people felt the way they did.

Soon, the lack of friends and the sporadic hidden lovers and such push me into the greener, less clear-cut mire of American politics of race and class and gender and sexuality and the media and the contradicting realities of life here.

So now, I live in a world where Blackness, defines African-American-ness. Whiteness as Caucasian. And the other races incidental and certainly not related in polar terms. Now what do I do?

You find the Queer community.

But being Queer is only permissable and safe, if you are Caucasian, and live in San Francisco, or African American and live in Atlanta.

New York is a good melt of a myriad of pockets of places where you can be a lot of the little parts of everything and still find really, really small parts for all of you to be safe.

But New York City is the hardest place to live with.

Like a lover you shouldn't have fallen for in the first place, it romances you by the lights reflected in the Forever-Hudson by night, and plumb knocks you off your feet when you are not looking. It sends you parades in the summer, crazy nights with wonderful lovers (some with very quick fists) and if you are lucky and so inclined you learn a whole lot of unpleasant lessons about what people do when they get desperate and disparaging.

If you are quick, and you are surrounded by people who love something you love, You form a circle, not unlike the friends on the sitcom "Friends." (only they are white and live in larger apartments and have a lot more money and they laugh more and forgive each other more and live closer to each other- all in Manhattan, mark you!)

You learn to be wary of the people who come to NY with dreams larger than their new apartments will fit, the ones who become bitter and begin to enjoy the sport of making others leave their broken aspirations on the piss-stained sidewalks of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn.

So now, in the culture shift, I'm lose all of the perks of "being almost white." Here, I have to get vicious to claim Blackness (my being the "coconut" with the thick-ass accent), and I have to deal with the downside of phenotypic Blackness from those who see me walking in the malls, in the coffee shops etc. Security guards watch me too. White girls are wary of me too. Old white women will pull themselves up and away from me in the elvator- (but this might be because of the very large, very unkempt afro) but you get my drift?

Every time I enter a room, I must apply and write a whole new spiel for my "Black Card."

So I found the Gay people. Ha! Racism is as rampant there as it is in the Malls of Minnesota. Only there, I can speak freely of an evening with my love, or how I feel about a woman walking by, or what a struggle it is to acclimate our families to new faces. We can bitch together about straight girls who allow for you fingers, but not your mouth. The ones who will spend the night with you, but will never invite you to see their rooms. But nothing of Race. We never speak of race.

But I am still here, flitting from world to world. Watering the apropriate parts of me at different oases, at each stop, fighting the fury and the puzzlement of the faces as they discover the odds and ends of the mutt of experiences that complete me.

In hope
and frustration
and the constant worry
about tomorrow and the day after
and the day after that might just be different

hope is the blood that inks my irredescent pen

Staceyann