Reflections on Being an African American and Identity
Today I had a rude awakening as to a lesson in ambition and the lengths people will go to to just win something anything. The incident begins several years ago with a call from a woman I never saw in my life calling to reminisce about the past. While I thought I have never met this woman in my life she extolled about our relationship and Italy. The only problem is I was two in Italy and she was 18 so It is virtually impossible that we could have had any sort of meaningful relationship. To be fair, I had a relationship with her sister who was very kind to me even after we moved back from the states, I can honestly say I never remembered seeing this woman in my life. Well anyway it turned out that she was a Mary Kay salesperson, a woman who prior to her retirement from the military at 47 had accomplished much in her career, enough that when she performed a facial on my mother and myself. My mother said why don't you have her be the godmother to your child. I was placed on the spot especially when I felt that the only reason she was in our lives was to sell Mary Kay.
However I did think there was a relationship to be had. As a young child of nine I remembered my mother one day tending to her dying mother. Her mother had one wish that day , to have spaghetti and a glass of wine. My mother granted her that wish that day. I remember this lady's mother being very kind, but the strange thing I remember is her mother mever and I mean never introduced us to her in the several years that we reconnected in the states and the mary kay representative lived fifteen minutes away.
Anyway back to the present this woman contacted us to sell us Mary Kay and becuase she was a friend we bought at least three hundred dollars worth of cosmetics from her and had several parties, though lightly attended for her. We even bought makeup from her that was so old that it burnt our lips when we put it on. I suppose the final straw in terms of MAry Kay for me was when I got paid for a website and I honestly thought, wow this woman is trying to be a director and she has accomplished every other goal in her life the first thing I'm going to do is purchase some Mary Kay from her, though I knew that I was allergic to it. I decided to give it one more try. Well what she sent me was creme to finish with a deep fingernail print in it. I felt so disgusted I wanted to throw up. At that point I decided wow this woman must have a very deep disdain for you to send you something like that. So I kept the relationship very light. Well this summer since the child support my son's father was supposed to pay never came and I was extremely low on cash. I asked this woman if she could possibly purchase my child one outfit for school which would have cost about $20.00. When I called I said, do you thing as my child's godmother you could take her for an outfit. Well she told me that she was not going to enable me and I should go to a social services agency and ask for help and to take her off the list as Godparent, after two years(honestly I wonder what God she serves, or what church she goes to, I think its that church where divorce is encouraged, a relative of mine filled me in on that). Of course I responded to her I bought all of that Mary Kay from you and you can't help me. Her response was I thought you liked Mary Kay. Now honestly in a city full of women if I liked Mary Kay do you think I would have just started to buy it when she sold it. She knew that she had traded upon a friendship to sell some makeup and of course I told her that. I even told her I thought she had originally agreed to be my childs God Mother to sell some makeup which she probably did.
For the record she recruited me to sell Mary Kay where I woud try to sell makeup to earn the kit, however when it was close to some conference or other thing she called and just gave me the kit becuase she needed one more person to make it to the next level. For some reason I always thought that the director was the provider of the makeup for sales persons to sell but not so. Mary Kay wants you to start out buying your own store. When I said well I can't afford it. She did not say much becuse she had only bought the kit so she could move to the next level. I asked if I could sell from her store and she said yes but she would have to get a percentage which with Mary Kay it's a 50% markup so she said I would get 25% of the markup and she would get 25% percent since I was selling from her store. HOnestly if you think about it this did not make much sense since if you went into her stock room she had a room full of products that she was not selling as well as was going around selling makeup that she had had for years at discounts, ie. the makeup that burnt me. Well I tried to sell Mary Kay but when I received the kit I started using the products and giant zits began to break out on my face, and when my daughter decided to put it on her face after she saw me, guess what happened to her a giant zit came on her head, and she was a 3 or 4 todler at the time. After that I told this woman that I could not in all honestly sell something I felt would hurt women. Honestly I am not that in love with money that I would hurt others by selling something detrimental to their skin. As for black women I read essence magazine and essence stated that black opal soap for oiky black skin is the best. I purchased their creme to powder foundation and it works and no zits. She did do me another favor when I was unable to see her to get the cash she owed me I asked her to pay a fee for me from the money I was owed and she did that. I will be grateful for that forever.
As for the point of this post, as a single mother I have found that there are plenty of people out there ready to prey on you and take all that they can get and never give back. This is not the first expeerience I've had. I've had people literally take my work and not pay me for the work I did as an internet professional and then tell me to get a job, duh if you would have paid me I would not be in the predicament that I am in now. I've had to take over work for worthless individauls who have taken the money for websites and not completed them and brought me in to complete the sites for the other half of the payment and then when I actually served the client by sugessting that they own their domain name they got mad because there was no extra money for them and then called me horrific names related to my single mom status. The other day this individual really tried to prey on my desperate straits and called and asked me to peddle my body which I've never done before and never will.
The above were all African American individuals. The strange thing about it is that white people seem to take to these type of individualsl like ducks to water. These black individuals who are essentially predatory and willing to attack African Americans get a resounding high five from whites. However to base your success on looking down on others and calling them names is problematic to me.
Finally back to the Mary Kay lady I know you really don't think people are buying Mary Kay from you that have never bought if before are buying it becuase they just have to have it. Anyway a lesson has been learned in my life some people will do anything for a penny even pretend to be the Godmother to a three year old now five honestly thinks that she has a Godmother. When My mother heard of this she said Poor my daughters name!!!!!!! And I suppose at this point I am getting quite weary and honestly afraid of blacks and what they will do for a buck, Deep in my heart I know that there exist blacks with core values becuase I've been around them before but they have seemed to disappear and everytime I see a black person lately I seem to see soulless, people who will do anything to anybody to get ahead even sell their souls. I know a lot of people will be mad at me for saying this but I know there are some white people who write that they are ashamed to be white, well at this point I am ashamed to be black and truth be told at this point I would alomst rather be anything else but.
However I did think there was a relationship to be had. As a young child of nine I remembered my mother one day tending to her dying mother. Her mother had one wish that day , to have spaghetti and a glass of wine. My mother granted her that wish that day. I remember this lady's mother being very kind, but the strange thing I remember is her mother mever and I mean never introduced us to her in the several years that we reconnected in the states and the mary kay representative lived fifteen minutes away.
Anyway back to the present this woman contacted us to sell us Mary Kay and becuase she was a friend we bought at least three hundred dollars worth of cosmetics from her and had several parties, though lightly attended for her. We even bought makeup from her that was so old that it burnt our lips when we put it on. I suppose the final straw in terms of MAry Kay for me was when I got paid for a website and I honestly thought, wow this woman is trying to be a director and she has accomplished every other goal in her life the first thing I'm going to do is purchase some Mary Kay from her, though I knew that I was allergic to it. I decided to give it one more try. Well what she sent me was creme to finish with a deep fingernail print in it. I felt so disgusted I wanted to throw up. At that point I decided wow this woman must have a very deep disdain for you to send you something like that. So I kept the relationship very light. Well this summer since the child support my son's father was supposed to pay never came and I was extremely low on cash. I asked this woman if she could possibly purchase my child one outfit for school which would have cost about $20.00. When I called I said, do you thing as my child's godmother you could take her for an outfit. Well she told me that she was not going to enable me and I should go to a social services agency and ask for help and to take her off the list as Godparent, after two years(honestly I wonder what God she serves, or what church she goes to, I think its that church where divorce is encouraged, a relative of mine filled me in on that). Of course I responded to her I bought all of that Mary Kay from you and you can't help me. Her response was I thought you liked Mary Kay. Now honestly in a city full of women if I liked Mary Kay do you think I would have just started to buy it when she sold it. She knew that she had traded upon a friendship to sell some makeup and of course I told her that. I even told her I thought she had originally agreed to be my childs God Mother to sell some makeup which she probably did.
For the record she recruited me to sell Mary Kay where I woud try to sell makeup to earn the kit, however when it was close to some conference or other thing she called and just gave me the kit becuase she needed one more person to make it to the next level. For some reason I always thought that the director was the provider of the makeup for sales persons to sell but not so. Mary Kay wants you to start out buying your own store. When I said well I can't afford it. She did not say much becuse she had only bought the kit so she could move to the next level. I asked if I could sell from her store and she said yes but she would have to get a percentage which with Mary Kay it's a 50% markup so she said I would get 25% of the markup and she would get 25% percent since I was selling from her store. HOnestly if you think about it this did not make much sense since if you went into her stock room she had a room full of products that she was not selling as well as was going around selling makeup that she had had for years at discounts, ie. the makeup that burnt me. Well I tried to sell Mary Kay but when I received the kit I started using the products and giant zits began to break out on my face, and when my daughter decided to put it on her face after she saw me, guess what happened to her a giant zit came on her head, and she was a 3 or 4 todler at the time. After that I told this woman that I could not in all honestly sell something I felt would hurt women. Honestly I am not that in love with money that I would hurt others by selling something detrimental to their skin. As for black women I read essence magazine and essence stated that black opal soap for oiky black skin is the best. I purchased their creme to powder foundation and it works and no zits. She did do me another favor when I was unable to see her to get the cash she owed me I asked her to pay a fee for me from the money I was owed and she did that. I will be grateful for that forever.
As for the point of this post, as a single mother I have found that there are plenty of people out there ready to prey on you and take all that they can get and never give back. This is not the first expeerience I've had. I've had people literally take my work and not pay me for the work I did as an internet professional and then tell me to get a job, duh if you would have paid me I would not be in the predicament that I am in now. I've had to take over work for worthless individauls who have taken the money for websites and not completed them and brought me in to complete the sites for the other half of the payment and then when I actually served the client by sugessting that they own their domain name they got mad because there was no extra money for them and then called me horrific names related to my single mom status. The other day this individual really tried to prey on my desperate straits and called and asked me to peddle my body which I've never done before and never will.
The above were all African American individuals. The strange thing about it is that white people seem to take to these type of individualsl like ducks to water. These black individuals who are essentially predatory and willing to attack African Americans get a resounding high five from whites. However to base your success on looking down on others and calling them names is problematic to me.
Finally back to the Mary Kay lady I know you really don't think people are buying Mary Kay from you that have never bought if before are buying it becuase they just have to have it. Anyway a lesson has been learned in my life some people will do anything for a penny even pretend to be the Godmother to a three year old now five honestly thinks that she has a Godmother. When My mother heard of this she said Poor my daughters name!!!!!!! And I suppose at this point I am getting quite weary and honestly afraid of blacks and what they will do for a buck, Deep in my heart I know that there exist blacks with core values becuase I've been around them before but they have seemed to disappear and everytime I see a black person lately I seem to see soulless, people who will do anything to anybody to get ahead even sell their souls. I know a lot of people will be mad at me for saying this but I know there are some white people who write that they are ashamed to be white, well at this point I am ashamed to be black and truth be told at this point I would alomst rather be anything else but.
posted by blackhippychick @ 10:56 PM
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