The Color “Perpetrator” / When the Rainbow is Estranged
- Brandie Garcia
- Oct 24
- 5 min read
In blue hues, pink dollops, and yellow accents upon my face, I attended the MassQ Ball 2025: Color. This project, a labor of love in many ways, was one of the first large-scale events I ever helped plan. Standing there at the Arnold Arboretum, walkie-talkie in hand, surrounded by thousands of attendees, I felt an immense sense of pride in seeing the final outcome of what was a long year of extensive planning, spearheaded by our fearless Artistic Director Ashleigh Gordon along with co-producing visual artist Daniel Callahan.
After a busy morning setting up and managing the staff tent, I was finally able to step away to be properly MassQed for the first time. MassQing, an artistic practice devised by Callahan, brings the internal to the external – revealing rather than concealing one’s inner essence through the ritual application of face paint. After taking a seat under the white tent, I was blessedly paired with MassQer Amya Meshelle, a multidisciplinary visual artist from Brockton, MA.
MassQing at its essence is very intimate, which I wasn’t entirely expecting. Still I leaned in, as the MassQ Ball’s energy encouraged. As a result, Amya and I formed a connection right away, and I allowed myself to answer her questions in an honest manner.
“Tell me about yourself,” she prompted. “What are your biggest fears?” and “what do you want out of life?” The end result was a MassQ inspired by the concept of cells and the ways the body can bring both joy and pain as we continue our journey in our fleshly vessels. I have continued to meditate on the power of this year’s theme of the MassQ Ball in relation to Blackness: color. Although my MassQ may be removed, the color in my skin remains deep.
“I have a right to show my color, darling. I am beautiful, and I know I’m beautiful” – Crystal Labeija (from the 1968 documentary film "The Queen")
As defined by the Oxford Language dictionary, color is “the property possessed by an object of producing different sensations on the eye as a result of the way the object reflects or emits light.” When color is discussed in relation to Blackness – the power it holds and the sense of sight that helps us navigate the world – Black ballroom icon Crystal Labeija immediately comes to mind. Crystal Labeija, featured in the 1968 film “The Queen,” was a Black trans woman commonly credited with establishing the Ballroom house system, where chosen families or “houses” create communities of care that also compete in Balls or pageants. Color was at the crux of the house system developed by Labeija following multiple drag pageant losses allegedly due to the judges’ preference for white queens. Labeija even went as far as painting herself lighter in an attempt to appeal to the judges.
The MassQ Ball at its core is about ritual–with MassQing rooted in global Indigenous face painting practices and the Ball featuring cultural performances from all around the world simultaneously. As I was MassQed and the Arboretum was transformed into a celebratory sociospace of people of color, all I could hear was Labeija’s words echoing in my ears. I was indeed beautiful, and I had a right to show my color, whether that was my MassQ or my skin itself. The Arboretum was made to celebrate the appearances and experiences of people of color, akin to my skin itself being otherworldly – as if my skin was imbued with a sacredness that was venerated by the ritual known as the MassQ Ball. Labeija’s words, a Black ancestor, had spoken a message that many echoed before her and it had taken physical manifestation at the MassQ Ball. A positive possession of sorts.
As illustrated by Labeija, the concept of color has not always been kind to Black people. Color has intrinsically dictated our worth amidst the Atlantic slave trade and beyond. The commodification of skin and Black bodies as a product continues, even being perpetuated within our own communities. At times we have defined ourselves as chocolate brown, brown sugar, caramel, cafecito con leche, and more. The color of our skin is normalized to be connected to consumption as if we are food products, directly linked to the historical practices of cannibalizing as punishment for Black people (i.e. the cannibalization of Nat Turner by white people after his rebellion). The expression of “seeing red” when angry becomes true within me when I have been conditioned to think of generational bloodshed and redlining in the segregated city of Boston. Purple is not joy nor sadness, but bittersweet as Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” instructs. Yellow is the brick road that can be walked upon with confidence in “The Wizard of Oz” but the yellow taxis refusing service in “The Wiz” shatter that with discrimination.
Color is at the heart of the concept of Blackness as a social category; one only made to juxtapose the concept of whiteness. Society demands people of color be painted with a color not visible to the eye, but felt within the hierarchy: the color “perpetrator”. Blackness has always been more than just the color of our skin, but a social construct imposed upon us. Color is more than the reflection of light we simply see. Historically, we have been colored as “perpetrators” within society – the true shade of our humanity obscured by this tint. This experience of being colored “perpetrator” was made famous by W.E.B Dubois’ and the idea of “double consciousness”–or the phenomena of seeing your true self, while also being aware of the identity that society has painted upon you.
The MassQ Ball functionally plays with this concept of “double consciousness” by revealing our true selves for all of society to see. MassQing refuses the coloring of perpetration by instead coloring ourselves boldly, with the paint we wear impossible to ignore. After generations of trauma in the name of color, MassQing is the healing practice we can use to redefine our relationship with the light that shines into our life.
Author Ntozake Shange, pictured left, and her work, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf” pictured right.
I think about the many Black artists that have come before Daniel Callahan and the ways their impact has shaped the practice of MassQing; artists who also try their best to come to terms with the concept of color. Artists such as Ntozake Shange, whose work, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf”, tackles the Black femme experience through the motif of color. Shange tells the story of seven women, each identified by separate colors, labeling the work definitively for “colored girls who have considered suicide / but moved to the ends of their own rainbows”. The piece is for Black women who have lost their lives to suicide and are in the afterlife where rainbows flourish, yet by the end it is said it is "...for colored girls who have considered suicide/ but are movin to the ends of their own rainbows." offering a hope that rainbows can be found within life if we move to find them. I interpret this as also applying to how we find our own meaning of color, in practices such as MassQing and more, rather than allowing defined notions of color to confine us. We create our own rainbow.
In closing, this blog is for the colored perpetrated; for those who have lived a life when the rainbow is estranged; for those who know the many meanings of color; for those searching for our own rainbow, still hoping that we will find it; for those, like me still dancing and staying in community, trying our best to learn from each other; for those that have masked and MassQed and will probably continue to alternate between both throughout their lives. One day, our rainbow will be enuf.