You know we all speak
from the person we are. We try to speak from our hearts if we are honest and
true. There are those - many - who don't care about that and say whatever they
want to whomever they want to because they think they have the right to do
that. Those are people who don't matter. I really believe that if you don't
care about other people, you aren't worth a dime.
Black people have had
to live our lives not saying what we really mean. Not saying what we feel. Not
being able to express ourselves for fear of alienating, offending and making
white people "uncomfortable." We have to had to worry if what we said
would get us lynched, threatened, fired, banished, ostracized, etc. We have had
to smile when our hearts were breaking, we have had to act like we were happy
when we weren't and we have had to swallow insult after insult after insult without
saying a word in response.
Black women are branded “angry” if we say how we truly feel. Same with Black men. White people claim to be afraid of us if we don’t put on the “go-along-to-get-along” mask. “I was afraid for my life,” they say.
White people freak out
when we call them on their racism. “I’m not a racist!” they scream, right after
they did or said something so racist it makes your head spin. White women start
crying and of course that makes white men want to comfort them, and so they
blame us for making her cry and suddenly we are the antagonist in a situation
where we were attacked and insulted. But we are not supposed to show our emotions.
We are supposed to just take it.
We are tired of that.
Others, like me, have tried to educate and explain so that our words are understood but that has been hard too because often, our words have fallen on deaf ears. It's only now that people are paying attention after seeing videos of what we have been trying to address for years.
So, we are struggling to try to work together and, in this environment, we find we are still being stifled when we express ourselves.
Reality - we don't speak the same way. We don't say the same things and sometimes if we do, it means something different than what the common thought is.
All this back and forth about the n-word for example. Black people don't use it as a negative term. It's a form of a greeting, a sign of shared experience or heritage, friendship, etc.
Yeah, we shouldn't use it and many of us are actively trying not to. It's a pejorative established by non-white people who used it as a weapon against us. It was one more term to deny our humanity. A lot of Black people want to take it back and make it our word for our relationships.
And so, now white people want to use it too.
No.
I don't think there is a Black person alive who hasn't had a white person (or a child) bristling with anger and hate who couldn't think of anything else to say to hurt us spit that word at us. Write that word to us. They wanted to say the worst thing they could think of to say to us and so they used that word.
White supremacists enjoy saying it to us. It brings back those “good old days” when they could address us any way they wanted and knew they would get no reaction.
Yeah, rappers use it in their “music” and so folks think now they can get away with it by claiming they are just “singing” what they hear in the “songs” they listen to.
Because of the negative connotation of the word, there is no situation where a white person can say this to a Black person without bringing up a very negative reaction.
Why? Because white people made it that way. By making it a weapon, it gets a very strong reaction from us. White people say it to hurt us and we know it. I don’t know a single white person on this Earth who knows me well enough, who is close enough to me to address me with that word and not expect to get cursed out or slapped.
Just don’t. I know white people don’t like being told what they can’t do, but add this to your list of words to just never ever use like those words in the dictionary that you don’t know and don’t use.
Just don’t.
Now, the word coon. Once again, there is a cultural difference. White people have used it just like the n-word. It’s a negative thing, racist and offensive in origin and when white people say it, we know what they mean.
When Black people say it, it has a whole different meaning. When we call someone a coon, it’s like we called them Benedict Arnold. It’s negative for us, but in a different way.
We use it on Black people who have seemingly turned their back on us. People who are struggling to identify as white and to get white approval and we find that to be treasonous. We also recognize the truth that those people who adopt that attitude are usually being used as tokens by white people who don’t really care about them and really do see them as coons. When they are done with them, they kick them to the curb and go back to their white supremacist buddies without batting an eye.
So, if we call someone a coon, it is not the same as if a white person says it. Understand that.
Facebook doesn’t get that. If we are in a group with white people, and one of us refers to Candace Owens, or Ben Carson, for example as coons, there will always be that one white person who will immediately think, “I can’t say that and so they can’t either!” and report us. And FB will punish us for it.
A lot of times, we are repeating what someone said to us, or a post that we saw by a racist, but it doesn’t matter. The bots that look at the posts only see that word and respond accordingly.
Look, racism is a white people problem. White supremacy is a white people problem. Neither will go away until white people stop whining, crying, blaming and not accepting responsibility for what has happened since this country was born. It doesn’t matter that it makes them uncomfortable or that they don’t want to be seen as “the bad guy.” White people have to work this out among themselves.
Several years ago, I was involved in creating an anti-racism group. A white woman and I decided it was time to address the issue in an open way, giving people the forum to talk about racism in an effort to kill it.
We had meetings and invited friends and soon friends invited friends and our meetings grew from a couple of people to dozens. We had Black and white people involved for the same purpose we thought.
I had an experience when teaching college classes years before that opened my eyes. At first, my students separated themselves by race and there was no interaction. But as we talked about racial issues, as they got honest about how they felt, things got emotional and almost heated. I was nervous that things would erupt into a fight, but that didn’t happen.
What did happen was after getting those very uncomfortable things out in the open, the students grew closer. They became friends. They sat together and talked to each other. They stopped looking at each other as “the other.” It was wonderful to behold.
So, I thought the same thing would happen with this anti-racism group. Our meetings got loud and emotional and instead of letting it play out, the white people got intimidated and uncomfortable with the reactions they saw.
Talking about race and racism isn’t easy. It’s hard. It’s difficult to hear people relate stories about things that have happened to them, how they have been treated, how their families have been insulted and affected by white supremacy. It’s hard to listen to people who resent white people because of it. It is hard to hear that people bear years and perhaps generations of anger and hatred against people who aren't like them. Some people have been raised to believe that Black people aren't even human. But all that has to come out in the light for the demons to be exorcised.
The white people complained to the white woman who co-created the group with me. She was uncomfortable with it too. Our political differences came into the mix as well. She was conservative and I am liberal. We were in the middle of a difficult election in our area and all that was brought up.
I remember once an older couple came to a meeting. They didn’t understand why Black people were angry. They wanted things to go back to the way “used to be.” The 50’s they said, were the best time. Everything was peaceful and everyone knew how things were.
I said something like, oh, when white people could call us names and get away with it? When we had to ride in the back of the bus and train and weren’t allowed to sit where we wanted? When we couldn’t stay in hotels and eat in the same restaurants? Where we were not allowed to buy houses where we wanted and we had to go to separate but unequal schools? When interracial marriages were illegal? Those the days you mean?
That wasn’t what they meant, they said. They were outraged that I brought all that up. It wasn’t fair. They just didn’t understand. We didn’t understand. They got mad and left after other people there agreed with me.
Some of the white people
just couldn’t handle us saying what we felt. I don’t know if it was guilt,
anger, or what, but it was just too much for them.
I had seen progress in our meetings until the white people decided to make rules making it difficult to honestly and openly express your feelings.
They wanted to keep it
civil and quiet and they wanted to stop the outbursts and tears. They were
afraid of the rage and resentment. They were more comfortable with no emotions,
no real feelings, just being logical and racism isn’t logical. It’s emotional
and it’s full of anger and hate and fear and ugliness.
Black people were outraged and insulted and many stopped coming to the meetings. They felt they were once again being stopped from speaking the way they wanted to. We had to alter our emotions to make people feel safe. Comfortable.
The group still exists, but it isn’t nearly the force it could have been or should have been without that rule. It should have been a safe place for everyone to speak to racism but instead, it was defanged and declawed and it was basically a place for white people to complain that they didn’t understand what Black people wanted.
We can’t get past this if we cannot be honest and say what we mean. Black people have to listen and look at white hatred almost every day. But white people cannot stand to look at our reactions to it, don’t want to hear our rage and our pain. It makes them “uncomfortable.”
I say grow up and put your adult panties on, sit down and listen. Don’t take what you hear personally, don’t get defensive, just open your heart and mind and listen. Learn. Grow.
Look in your own heart. Who are you when it comes to race relations? Do you have Black people in your personal lives? Do you regard them as whole entire people? Are they your friends, but in a way, you still consider yourself better or superior to them? Or do you just sit with them at restaurants, at bars, at church but you don’t really interact with them? Are they welcome in your home? Can they speak to you about their lives without your “getting uncomfortable?”
Do you worry what your friends will think if you are close to a Black person? Are you afraid or loathe to date interracially because you are concerned about what others will think?
You really need to study your own thoughts and feelings and decide if you want to merely not be a racist as opposed to being anti-racist.
Listen to us with your heart. Step outside of being white and trying to defend yourself. Listen as a human being. Our anger isn’t directed at you. If you are truly our friend, you will want to hear how we feel and know what hurts us and you will want to embrace all that we are just as we want to embrace all that you are.
Only then will we really believe that you are an ally and that you have our back. Only then can we share our lives and become the one human race that we were always meant to be.
Are you ready for that?
