Just a White girl in a Black World
Machina Wolff’s ‘I’m Down”
Introduction:
Machina Wolff was the whitest of all white girls that grew up in a predominately black neighborhood with her white father. She grew up always feeling that she was not good enough for anyone. She was never black enough for her black counterparts, neither was she white enough for her white peers. In the year 2010, her self written, best selling memoir, “I’m Down” was published. In her memoir she painfully reminisces on trying to fit in with her father, who honestly thought he was a black man, along with a district full of black kids that she didn’t relate to. This unsuccessful longing to please and correlate with everyone around her made her uncertain of who she really was for a long time. She was always trying to be someone she truly wasn’t to prove that she was in fact “down” and that was her downfall. Although she may have thought fitting in with her neighborhood and dad was her only quandary, it was actually an identity crisis within that she needed to heal and eventually did resolve.
Significant Events/Incidents:
- Mishna’s parents separated when she was just 7 years old. Usually when divorce separates a family, kids, especially as young as Mishna, experience a lot of sadness, anger, and disbelief. But not Mishna, she never felt like her parents were a fit for each other and always wondered how they wound up married in the first place. Mishna writes, “I know divorce is supposed to be hard on kids, but when my parents finally did it, it wasn’t really that hard on me…” (21). According to her, this life-changing incident was no big deal, in fact she anticipated the day it came to pass. She hated the tension between her parents and the discomfort it caused in their home. Once the divorce came into fruition, Mishna and her sister went on to live with their dad, who is pictured above.
- At age 11, Mishna was moved from her long time school in her poor neighborhood, to a new school for gifted students where the majority of her peers had skin as white as hers. This life transforming incident sounds like it was a was way for her to finally connect with people whom she may better relate to, but it was even harder to deal with than the divorce of her parents. Even though she landed into a better school academically, she was surrounded by rich white kids who thought she was too urban. “I wasn’t supposed to belong with these rich white kids… as the days went on I started to feel lonely, the lunches and recesses were brutal…”(57). The preppy juveniles picked on the way she talked, how she dressed and the fact that she was poor. So not only was she struggling to fit in at home and her old school, she encountered the same theme of issues at her new place of education. This was a traumatic event for Wolff, because she now felt like even more of an estrangement.
3. Further along in the end, Mishna came to a breaking point with her frustrations of being an outcast. Additionally, the overwhelming effects from the false accusations, and disrespect from her step-mother became too much to bare. Instead of standing up for his daughter, her father stood back and allowed his new wife to tear down his child, and that never made life any easier on her, it only made it much worse. Mishna contemplated on either trying to stay complacent in the detrimental life her father had for her or to relocate with her mother to a much better quality of life; a healthy environment where she could focus on flourishing, not containing her mind from insanity. Mishna knew her dreams of being successful and happy were unattainable under the conditions of her fathers rule; she knew she had to leave in order to better her mental state and secure her future. In a state of depression, she exclaims, “I wasn’t gonna talk to my dad, because he would talk me out of it. I was just gonna get my sh*t and get the he** out…”(227). She made the life altering decision to move in with her mother, and her father surprisingly didn’t blame her. He knew the unhealthy pressures he bestowed upon her and the lack of encouragement he never embedded into his child all of those years. She doesn’t say much at the end about how she turned out, but she definitely became a best selling author known around the world in the aftermath.
Within this video of Mishna Wolff herself, you will hear her as she speaks to students at Florida International University and addresses the importance of healthy connections and overcoming personal tribulations.
Historical Contexts:
In Wolff’s memoir, she did not discuss historical events, only events that pertained to her family, schools, and personal life as a child. But as told in Wolff’s memoir, her white father, married a black woman during times when interracial dating was still highly frowned upon. Mishna was living during a time when interracial dating was not as accepted, so i’m sure that made life a little more stiffer for her and her siblings. But according to an article by “The Christian Science Monitor”, during the 1980’s, the time frame of when her father got hitched, interracial dating was about 1 in 17, whereas in 2010 when this book was published, the rate was nearly 1 in 7, which more than doubled. So you can see how far along society has come on the matter and progression still continues to accelerate.
Furthermore, when John Wolff took his two children from their mother after their divorce in the 80's, he didn’t give her much of a say-so and she was basically forced to submit to his demands. Fast-forward to 2010(same year the book was published), law enforcement would have made both parents agree upon a parenting plan (pictured below). Legally, you can’t get away with dictating the relationship of a mother and her children in this day and age. And all the while John Wolff was pretending to be black, and purposely didn’t work because he wanted to live out the stereotype that black men wouldn’t work, real blacks were actively dealing with race relations and negative economic statuses because of their race. In the 1980’s, during the peak of economic conservatism, black America was literally struggling to land jobs, and if they were blessed enough to have one, white prejudices were a sure anchor that weighed blacks down in the occupational world. But, adversity only pushes individuals to greatness, and it too shall be overcome. Thanks for reading!
Works Cited
Wolff, Mishna. I’m Down: A Memoir. 1st St. Martin’s Griffin ed. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010. Print.
FIUadvising, Academic and Career Success. YouTube, YouTube, 24 Oct. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FgUATU8Jc.
Giphy. “Sad Black And White GIF — Find & Share on GIPHY.” GIPHY, GIPHY, 5 Apr. 2018, giphy.com/gifs/black-and-white-sad-crying-fnADNJma45G6c.
Kinloch, Graham C. “BLACK AMERICA IN THE 1980s: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, vol. 14, no. 1/2, 1987, pp. 1–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23262550. Accessed 19 June 2021.“Parenting Plan.” Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court, 2010, www.fljud13.org/.
“Interracial Marriage: More than Double the Rate in the 1980s.” The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 June 2010, www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0604/Interracial-marriage-more-than-double-the-rate-in-the-1980s.
