Actual Black Person.: A Message to my fellow POC who try to make nice with the white folks.

Jan 20, 2012
206 notes

A Message to my fellow POC who try to make nice with the white folks.

If you call yourself trying to combat racism by making nice with white people (and when I say making nice, I mean POC who have a majority of white friends and have adopted “whiteness” as their personality—ya’ll know who I’m talmbout)…let me clue you in on how often that backfires.

I used to be the same way. I thought, if white people and I are friends, they’ll eventually let go of that subconscious trigger that views me and every other Black person as a threat.

No.

What happens is instead of you being the emissary of Blackness is you become the “Other” or the “Exception”. You become a “credit to your race” as one white man had the gumption to say to me in the last year or so. You become the token Black friend that they use to defend their racist psyche when you’re not around.

You become the butt of their secret racist jokes.

You think they’re racing to your defends when other white people are being racist around them? No, they aren’t. They’re chuckling it up with their friends, and then telling themselves it’s okay because you’re cool and you can “laugh at yourself”. They convince you that racist humor is okay because you. Can. Laugh. At. Yourself.

You know where that method got me? It got me raped. Yes, and my rapist? The one in my story on the side bar? He was white. He was also my friend; someone I didn’t think would ever be capable of something like that. And before that, he was a huge crush of mine. It’s a mark of true patience and understanding (and lots of therapy) that I even still find some white men attractive, and I say that with the utmost sincerity.

Now, for you bourgeois Blacks shucking and jiving and surviving? I get it. We’re not living in a post-racial society because we still have to code-switch so that we’re not viewed as a threat and subsequently ostracized at school, at work, or in society in general. But when you adopt whiteness as your actual personality, you become blind to the fact that you’re not living in a post-racial society. You become blind to the fact that you’re the “Other”, the “Exception”, the “Token”, and a “credit to your race”. You become blind to the fact that most white people still see you as a second-class citizen in the backs of their minds, and when you don’t act according to the image they’ve already got for you, you either fall into the category of “threat” or “exception”. There’s no middle ground.

This touches a lot of sore spots for me personally.

Having grown up with no choice but to make nice with Whiteness or be unable to function in my life.

I probably take things like this too personally. The bolded bit especially. Mainly because that idea about presenting/behaving/seeming too “white” has been one of those things that has been used perjoratively towards me for my entire life by family and the few other Black folks I knew as a kid/young adult.

This is not personal towards the OP, it’s just one of those things I see around tumblr a little too constantly and it digs sore spot in my soul.

All of which tells me I should not be tumbling right now.

Later gators.

(via searchingforknowledge)