Blackgirls on Istedgade...

I'm reposting this article I wrote for an anthology back in 2004 because: a) my friend who I write about in the essay is actually moving from Copenhagen today :-( 

-- but good for her! And b) when I saw an Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie interview and she mentioned that she was stopped at Copenhagen International Airport and questioned at length. Confused, she asked her Danish host about it.  The host explained that given her Nigerian passport, they probably thought she was a prostitute. 

this summer i will be releasing all my essays about identity, womanhood, class & my experiences as a woman of color growing up in this very 'globalised' world. 

Black Girls on Istegade

By Lesley-Ann Brown

“It’s funny what people assume about you here in Denmark”, my friend Tracy confides as she takes the candy colored curlers out of her hair. It’s 10 at night, and I had just finished my shift at the restaurant. I was exhausted, but I needed a taste of Brooklyn before I went back to my loneliness and empty apartment. The moment Tracy opened her door and I laid eyes on her—with her curlers and bright pink bathrobe, I knew that I had rolled up to a place close to home. Tracy’s home on Istedegade was typical Brooklyn class—plush sofas in which you melted, an oversized television that fulfilled its entertainment purposes and an endless array of Black hair care products in her bathroom. Tracy wasn’t afraid of color, and this courage enraptured all that entered. Her apartment lacked the clinical minimalism that seems to dominate most Danish homes—and for that I was grateful.  I sat comfortably in one of her sofas and sipped on a can of freshly opened beer she had offered me. 

“I was at this party in Hellerup once and this man walks up to me and asks, ‘So, where do you clean?” We both laughed. Tracy is an Investment Banker and from Brooklyn. She is actually the only single American woman I know here who wasn’t lured here by love (sexual refugees my friend Paul calls us)—she was headhunted to work for one the largest Danish corporations. The man’s assumption wasn’t too far off though and I reminded her. “Yeah, but look at me—college educated and I clean.” 

“Ain’t that some shit though?” Tracy’s mid-night dark face looked thoughtful for a moment. I recalled the mornings, although not many, where I had to clean stores out in Lyngby. It was one of the first jobs I could get here in Denmark and as I took the train into Lyngby every morning I often contemplated my fate. How did I end up here in Denmark, where I had to start from scratch and work my way up again, alone and with a child? I remembered the relief I felt when I had gotten the job, so thankful that somebody, anybody, was willing to give me a chance to earn some money. And then I remembered the slight embarrassment I felt at the fact that here I was, 32 and having to clean toilets to barely make ends meet. The embarrassment melted quickly when I reflected on the fate of others who didn’t have the “privilege” of being American (passport to wealth, opportunity, terrorism and the ability to terrorize). I thought about the many others who had to come to Denmark not out of love, but poverty, political or religious persecution. Educated people, able people, probably more so than I, and whose fates were probably direr than mine. I remembered the many students I studied Danish with, and the many others who couldn’t even study at the same school as I because their English wasn’t good enough. They of course learned Danish much better than I did, but who would hire them?  There was the Pakistani who was a qualified computer programmer and had sent out hundreds of applications to no avail.  Then there was the gynecologist from Afghanistan or the engineer with a family from Iraq.  Their stories would come back to me, as I contemplated their fates here in this foreign land. 

 I then confided to Tracy, “Well, I was once asked if I was a prostitute.” Tracy looked unimpressed as she applied lotion to her legs.

“I get that all the time. When I walk down the street men sometimes approach me and asks me ‘how much?” We both shake our heads in bemusement…what was to become with our lives as two sisters here in Denmark?

Our conversation had things that were unsaid. We didn’t speak about the ambiguities of being Black American women here in Denmark. We didn’t speak about the fears we have that we will never meet men who see beyond the exoticism and see the humanity. For us, every man we met we had to get all Hendrix and asked, “Is he experienced?” We had to know whether we were some sexual experiment or seen as the women we really were. We both know that there are some Danish women who must think that it must be fabulous to be different. I’ve heard stories upon stories of women who talk about how “boring” they feel they look or how “lucky” I was that I was so “exotic”. They think how they have wanted to be different their whole lives, and look at us, so dark, so mysterious, so—inhuman? Tracy proceeds to get dressed. She is off to a party and she ties the long leather straps of her high-heeled shoes around her calves and puts on her beautiful black dress. She is thick and alive and so very woman. I feel so unhealthily thin when I am around her—how I wish I had a woman’s body and not this prepubescent frame I have been cursed with. And I laugh at how we are never satisfied about how we look. There are women who probably look at me and wish they had my hair, my hands, and my loud mouth. I look at other women and covet their curves, their asses and their breasts.  I know I should appreciate my difference but instead my difference becomes this barrier between me and the world, that makes me suspicious of people’s interest in me and sometimes it becomes tiresome to lug around this paranoia. That’s why Tracy and I lament the fact that we are not around Brothers—i.e. African American men. “Don’t you miss Black men?” I ask.

“Girl, who are you asking?”

“God, don’t you just love them?”
“And miss them”. But I wonder if this sentiment is merely a cover-up, a wish that there really was some Ideal that we could just never find here in Denmark.  But there was also something else I wanted to speak to Tracy about, but could not really articulate it at that time. It had to do with the staring phenomena that without fail, every person of color I have ever  met here have expressed that they have felt at one time or another.  There was David the trumpet player, Dina the Hawaiian the list was endless.  I suffered from it so terribly, that I found it quite difficult to leave the house alone for the first two years that I lived here. It’s this feeling you get that people are constantly staring at you. My friends used to tease me, “Relax, people are just staring at you because you’re pretty.” But it didn’t make sense. The stares were not complimentary, they were intrusive and abrasive and most importantly without love. I suppose I was being stared at with the same uncivilized eyes that gawked at the South African woman, Saartji Baartman (Hottentot Venus), who was once paraded around as a circus freak and whose remains were bottled in formaldehyde and remained on display at the Musee de l’Homme until 1976. 

“You know what the problem is, don’t you?” Tracy asks as she puts her earrings on. “It’s like people here think we’re all like what they see on television and in the movies.”

 “Yeah, suddenly you realize just how many people watch Rickie Lake.”

“And how many people be believing that shit too—that that’s how all Black people are in the States.” 

I remember a Eurowoman magazine I had seen on my arrival here in Denmark, where the editor-in-chief at the time displayed a picture of herself as a child with black smeared all over her face. The issue was supposed to celebrate African Americans, but instead, as far as I and every other person I had discussed the issue with, further illustrated Dane’s racial ignorance and insensitivity to otherness. There was also the continued sale of The Story of Little Black Sambo—where the story itself was surprisingly not offensive but the pictures were the epitome of racial stereotypes (the author’s original 1937 drawings were still used). 

“Lesley, I’m having so many problems at my job.”

“Yeah? How?”  In my eyes Tracy had it made. She had a job that paid well.. I’m working like 3 or 4 jobs around the clock—doing everything from cleaning motherfucking toilets to serving motherfuckers their food. Shit, I wish I had an office-gig like crazy. That way I could be financially independent and spend more time with my son. 

“It’s just my employee, she says the weirdest things.”

“Like?” 

“Like I should know how to sing and dance cause I’m Black.”

“Are you serious?” I don’t know why I’m surprised, because I hear it all the time as well. But I guess I expected more from someone who worked within corporate Denmark.

“Yes. She also said that it’s okay to call Black people niggers.” 

“Are you kidding?” I rolled my eyes in disbelief and recalled the time when my husband’s friend called my son a nigger. No one-- not my husband, his mother and least of all the friend, understood my rage. Instead I was made to feel as if I was the one in the wrong and told to “relax”. 

“No girl. And it’s just exhausting being around that kind of energy all the time.” 

“I could understand that.”  Which is one of the reasons I cherish my job as a vikar at an international school in Frederiksberg. Most of the kids there are African and Middle-Eastern or anden generations dansker, and while they speak Danish and certainly identify with Denmark’s western culture, there is still a pride present about their otherness, their culture which one can see has been carefully handed down to them by their parents. It’s funny to see the girls, infatuated with Black Hip-Hoppers and who nonchalantly wear t-shirts that read, “Comfort Girl, Born 2 Serve. All Girl’s Military Unit” (Obviously she nor her mother knows the meaning of comfort girl).  

“Did I ever tell you about what these two girls asked me?” I laughed at the memory as Tracy shook her head no. 

“They asked me why I was in Denmark and I told them because I had married a Dane and one of them replied, ‘you mean you left all those beautiful Black men in the States to marry a Dane?” She looked at me as if I had truly lost my mind. Maybe I had. 

It’s also been particularly entertaining for me to note the Dane’s reaction to the veil. I mean in Brooklyn, Black muslims were part of the community, and it was not uncommon to be seated next to a veiled student, be served by a veiled waitress or have friends who are veiled. I went to school with a girl named Mecca, and for me, as a Black American, Islam has always represented a more positive and colorful alternative to Christianity. So when the whole school shook their heads in shame at Hadia, a young Pakistani girl who returns to school after the summer holidays with a veil and exclaim, “Oh, it’s such a shame. I thought the family was more progressive than that, I mean not even the mother wears a veil.” I can’t help but wonder, “What’s the big deal?” I am so sick of Danes and this superior attitude they have towards Islam, or rather, let’s just cut it down to the truth, difference. 

“Well, it’s like the end of her childhood.” Stina, my co-worker confided during a discussion in the teacher’s lounge.

“How? It’s just a veil.” I can’t tell you how many times I have found myself having this debate with Danish women. “Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with it. You have these girls running around the city half-naked, but it’s more of an affront to people that there are some who would rather cover their hair…” I can’t understand it, I really can’t.” So it’s okay to show a woman’s ass in an underwear ad, but not okay for someone to cover her hair?

Tracy fingers her long curly braids and confides, “Girl, I’m getting a perm this weekend.” 

“Where?” I wonder where a sister can get her hair done here. It’s one of the reasons I decided to lock my hair—Although there are more and more Beauty Salons targeted toward Black women, you just never knew who you were letting up in your hair. Basically, a Black woman getting her hair done her in Denmark could be risky business. 

“Here, in Copenhagen.” She took a sip of her drink and pointed to her corner table. “That’s why I got my wig out—it’s all ready in case things don’t go as planned.” We laugh. I guess it’s the only thing we can do at this point. 

Tracy is ready to go to her party. I finish off my beer and slowly put my jacket on. I’m not ready to leave Brooklyn, Tracy or even her wig yet. But I must. I must go through her door and make my way up Istedgade, where I just might risk being asked, “How much?”  I suppose it’s not the worst one could experience as a foreigner here in Denmark. 

Kvinder Stiller Skarpt

Fotografi og historier

Informations Forlag, 2004

 The story could interestingly be a parable of how whites have continued to culturally appropriate all that is Black.  I could not help but wonder when I read it, if the story was that of the author’s own invention, or was originally an African tale “retold” thus she profited from. 

 The interesting thing is that many of the young girls at the school decide to cover their heads of their own volition.  An Egyptian I once studied Danish with had a younger sister, in her early 20s who, although not religious to that point, decided to start wearing the veil.  She immediately started to experience Danish people sneering at her, pushing her and even pinching her.