Wear What You Want To Wear

“I just put diamonds on all of my teeth

Now they probably think I ain’t intelligent” Under the Sun, by Dreamville & J. Cole, DaBaby’s verse.

The first time I heard this song was a revelation. Cole murders his verse, then Lute comes in and does damage, but the star of the song is DaBaby. He starts his verse off with “I just put diamonds on all of my teeth/Now they probably think I ain’t intelligent…” and I was transported to my childhood growing up in an all-white suburb of Minneapolis. The scars of segregation and a rapid integration still fresh on both of my parents.

Dreadlocks like Bob Marley are always acceptable, because it makes white people remember their dorm room where they had a poster with his image on it. They feel safe with Bob Marley like dreads, but anything else makes them feel uneasy, especially corn-rows. Yet, corn-rows are a must for any young and modestly attractive white woman, who spends even a second in the Caribbean to let everyone know they were worldly and cultured, because they had been overseas.

In fact, a small black boy walking down the street, by himself, was enough to trigger some white people to cross the street or clutch their wallets or purses. Now, even dressed in a bespoke suit on my way to court doing my job as a Phoenix car accident lawyer, I still get these same looks of conern from white people!

I take great pains in my appearance, well I did before Obama became President, after Obama became President I can honestly say I care very little about my appearance. I get invited to events, where powerful and well-monied individuals hold court. Yet, despite this adjacency to power, I dress horribly now, because of Obama.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates has stated several times about President Obama, he was a brilliant and handsome black man, married to an equally brilliant and beautiful woman, who together had two brilliant and beautiful daughters, and that gorgeous dog Beau. This family has attended the best schools in America. President Obama and Michelle Obama are best-selling authors. Barack Obama achieved the presidency, and yet a large and vocal section of America see him as nothing more than a leech.

Obama was hated, not because of his actual performance as the President of the United States of America, but because of what he represented: change and hope. Change from 43 white men who had all obtained the mantle of President and hope that anyone else after him could be President.

The whitelash that followed his Presidency was rage filled and unrelenting. They elected the first white President in Donald J. Trump, to be their avatar.

Donald Trump, is a thrice married man, serial adulterer, sore-loser, has three different baby-mommas, lacks a terminal degree, was handed everything from his father, and lacks any ability to write or deliver a speech. President Trump was unqualified, unprepared, and uninterested in doing the work of being the President of the United States of America. Donald Trump is actually everything that large swaths of white Americans believe Obama to be and they think Trump is what Obama is: a decent man.

Before Obama, I too would have been worried about the consequences of putting diamonds on all my teeth. Post Obama I simply don’t have time to care.