Homeownership has always been fraught for black Americans. My teen son reminded me decor choices can be, too When it came to flexing my muscle as a ?picker,? a term used lovingly by design dealers to describe an expert in the art of acquiring vintage pieces, one of my big wins was a tangerine-velvet sofa. The piece was meant to be resold, but instead ended up in my living room, along with a precious Peshawar rug.
My teenage son?s reaction to the couch was a wry ?Black people don?t have orange couches.? That the sofa isn?t actually orange didn?t keep his statement from sending me reeling. How could a young man who has grown up with all of the trappings of American comfort box himself in aesthetically and spatially" And what, exactly, did his sentiment mean" Though his remark was offhand, it made it clear that my son had already absorbed the idea that certain spaces, expressions, and ways of living were off limits to him. It was beyond simply not liking the sofa. He placed a limitation on himself based on an external narrative dictating how he was supposed to live.
Those limitations didn?t come from me or my husband. I was raised by a Caribbean family with a serious traditionalist streak. He was born and raised on Manhattan?s Lower East Side, by a power-feminist artist mother from Georgia. My grandfather was a real estate developer and owned a real estate auction house in Jamaica. My grandparents kept a beautiful and immaculate home; homeownership was a core ...