On Being A Less Terrible Whiteperson

Recently, an Alabama veteran hired KKK hitmen to kill his neighbor.
"He allegedly told an undercover agent that “I want this man hung from a tree like he is an animal. I want his penis cut off and I want him cut. You’re a hunting man right? I want him hung from a tree and gutted.” 
Post-racial America, ladies and gents.


Look.

Anyone who attempts to convince you that racism is dead, or isn't an overwhelming problem anymore should not be trusted or taken seriously. They are insane, detached from reality, and are viewing the world through a privilege-stained lens with their heads securely installed up their asses.

Anyone who believes, despite stories like this and the dozens that drip down my social media timelines daily, that "we're all the same" and that talking about race only exacerbates the problem, in my Black ass opinion, is to be viewed as a threat. You are a danger to my sanity and, as news reports show daily, my ability to make it through the day unmurdered.

That's not real life. That's not what my daily life tells me. That's not what the daily experiences of people who look like me signifies.

A reader sent me a lengthy email essentially telling me that, while my writing is enjoyable enough, my speaking so frequently on race and highlighting the bad in the world does nothing to improve things. He felt that I need to focus on the latest advancements in race relations (as if it's an iPhone update) and look for the good in people. Because it's "awkward and paints you as aggressive and pessimistic."

Hi.

Your categorizing me, or us, as aggressive means as much to me as the price of high grade pussy in downtown Los Angeles on any given day. So with that said:

Fuck you and fuck that shit from the bottom of my Nigger ass heart.

I'm a good person. I know good people. I love myself. I love, look out for, and look for the good in my people and that's enough for me. But you? You're a threat. And fuck your need for a pat on the back for having a Black friend or liking Black titties.

I don't believe in babysitting the emotions of bigots.

I don't believe in skirting difficult conversations or opting for a rosier view of things when every single Chocolate Wonder I know is intimately familiar with your 50 Shades of Bullshit.

I don't believe in sweeping my gripes under the rug or tucking in my concerns because it makes you uncomfortable, or because perhaps you personally have never lynched a man and therefore consider yourself a "good person," ESPECIALLY when we are never ever ever ever ever ever ever afforded that same consideration. We scream until we're hoarse that we are worthy of love and respect and look where that has gotten us.

Racism isn't my problem to fix. I can call you people out on your fuckshit day in and day out, correct you at every turn, hit you with #WellActually at every instance of White Misinformation, White Fear Mongering and White Terribleness, and it's still ultimately up to you, Horrible Whiteperson, to do better. It's up to you to separate yourself from the supremacy, the delusion, that insatiable need for victimization and desire to be oppressed (finally!!) and try to be a slightly less abysmal fucking human being. That, and it's up to you to take responsibility for the Mileys and other White Niggers whose ancestor-shaming antics we are forced to suffer.

Don't police my anger.

Don't tell me that things are better. For every colorblind optimist with an octaroon great grandbaby there are a metric fucktonne of Zimmerman apologists, kindhearted bigots and nice old White Grandmas who peel off a piece of their weekly Bingo winnings for faceless African babies with distended bellies yet believe in their heart of hearts that a White man was justified in robbing a Black child of his future adulthood by firing into a car because he felt sassed. Fuck you, ya hear?

Your skinfolk still, in 2014, bust nuts while fantasizing of cutting off our Black ears and Black dicks as souvenirs when you feel your Little Shop of White Horrors is under attack. Just because I can call a White woman out on her awful personhood and not immediately fear for my life doesn't mean that MLK's naïve ass dream of Katie and Keisha joining hands in chicken-eating harmony is a reality.

A Black figurehead in the White House of the United States of America does little to affect the daily lives of Black girls who may one day seek help and be greeted with a bullet to her dome. A Beyoncé and an Oprah don't mean much for the thousands of Black and brown children affected when 50 schools were shuttered in Chicago. It's not about a lack of hard work. A handful of successes don't offset the strife of the dark masses. It's bigger than our individual efforts.

Basically: save your anecdotes. Spare me your tales of that one time when you fucked a Black guy and propelled humanity forward. That does little for me and the terror people who look like me face at the hands of people who look like you.

Don't preach to the dark masses about your plight and a perceived encroachment upon your superiority rights.

Don't preach to the dark masses about our threatening sagging pants or our incriminating hoodies or our frightening thug music or our usage of THE N-WORD or any other thing that is, from your enlightened view as Oppressor, impeding our collective advancement or marking us as killable.

That lip flapping is better directed at you cohorts. They are who need words of encouragement from Benevolent Whitepersons such as yourself.

There's a reason I don't have an opinion on things like womb decoration or anti-aging techniques for the modern White woman's skin in frigid Midwestern climates: It has absolutely nothing to do with me. My opinion is not necessary or valid and adds nothing to the conversation. Most importantly, I don't know shit about it. As my good friend Michael Arceneaux said recently:

This may come as a shock to you, but there are instances, places, rooms, countries, and debates where you and your opinion are not welcome. Pro tip: Black life is one of those things.

Now, go stop your children from shooting up my niece's high school and learn your motherfucking place.

But you don't have to listen to me.

Read "The Worst of White Folks" by Kiese Laymon
Read "No Words Available" by Jamilah Lemieux
Read "How To Be a White Person On Halloween" by Rembert Browne
Read "The history white people need to learn" by Mary-Alice Daniel

Do better.

Black and wonderfully,

Alexander Hardy

Follow me on Twitter: @chrisalexander_
LIKE me on Facebook: Colored Boy

Subscribe to Extra Colored, Alexander Hardy's personal newsletter, and receive updates and exclusive content via email.


powered by TinyLetter

   

Comments

  1. I like the analogy about advances in race relations and iPhone updates. Trouble is both sides are updating and the software is getting more and more incompatible.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think this post is so fucking powerful and meaningful and a message that every single person needs to hear. The only issue is that this is also true for women... With rape, violence, domestic abuse, and horrific numbers on the rise. Black women it is even worse. But this article keeps calling out not white PEOPLE but white WOMEN. It is perpetuating the same oppression it is fighting.... This is called defensive othering and it gets us nowhere.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We say in london brrrrrrrrraaaaaaaap boooop booooooooop boooom. For shango, for ogun, for oya entirely. For her fire is within you in these words. Whirl wind non stopping at the shore. Sweeping sense in to acting dense folks along the way. Whooo! I don't know what to add. I love it, i love it and you. This is how you read!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Deshawn RobertsonMarch 03, 2014

    "Now, go stop your children from shooting up my niece's high school and learn your motherfucking place."

    Just so we clear on this shit I'm a proud brown man that could give shit about the opinion of any white person whether they be apologetic for their race or not.

    What I give a fuck about is that my wife and kid can walk down the street without having to worry about a young brother fucking shit up because his daddy didn't stick around and his moms was selling her shit to buy crack and he needs to prove he got balls by joining the other oppressed youths in being little gangsta ass pussies.

    My mom raised me by her self working two jobs in Memphis and I was the first in my family to go to college and I know even though I worked my ass off for an education that I'm going to get pulled over cause I drive a Lexus (never mind it's nine years old and has 190,000 miles on it) cause officers see me as a drug dealer and that I make the cashier nervous when I walk in to pay for my gas even though I'm dressed better than their boss .

    I know I'm not seen as an equal and I have anger about that. What really makes me want to explode though isn't the white lady that locks her door when I'm next to her at a traffic light... no it's the young black "thugs" that make me lock my fucking door when I pull up to a traffic light and see them on the corner... that make me watch my back when I walk to the corner to pick up milk... that wake my kid in the middle of the night with gun shots and make flashing red and blues a daily backdrop to my family's life.

    We got it bad enough without our equivalent of their backwards ass rednecks holding us back.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "aggressive and pessimistic"!?

    I am so sorry, i'm just plain out of cute costumes to amuse the crowd.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Black RageMarch 04, 2014

    This is amazing! "I don't believe in babysitting the emotions of bigots." This is the gospel RIGHT HERE!

    ReplyDelete
  7. That was... just... how can you be so ignorant towards white people? Yes the past is shit, and yes there is allot of guilt felt (by any moral person). But how we act as a human being should not be dictated by the colour of our skin. If you think it's fair that the current generation should attone for generations that past ages ago, then that's wrong. So what if my great great great uncle was racist, that doesn't make me. And what difference should it make if my friends are black or not? They're friends nether the less... I think you should take a step out of your tunnel vision, and think about how others may feel. My mother (single, two kids) had racism from her last partners family, because she was white. That in my opinion is as bad as 6yr olds in the playground calling eachother names cause someone is ginger. Can't you grow up?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well said.

    Am tired of being called angry or negative when I verbally recognize sexism or racism or homophobia in adverts/TV/movies/people, etc. As a white woman my experiences, etc., are different and I can never know what it's like to be a black person here, but it seems to me all a white person needs is two eyes and even the lowest number of working brain cells to see how terrible things are. And I'm just supposed to sit down and shut up and pretend like it doesn't exist? I can't unsee what I see. So yes, I'm angry.

    This sounds really - naive and probably righteous white person thinking she can fix things, because I know I can't open all the white people's eyes, and I'm not looking for any answers or to seem like a good guy, you don't know me so you won't know that. But I've been struggling for some time as to what I can do short of leaving the country for my own sanity. At the moment i've settled on listening and sharing via the social media stories/essays and hope that maybe one or two white "friends" read something that make them go "oh, i didn't see it that way before."

    That's it really. Forgive me. I'm tired and a bit hungover and I have no filter. Good night.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Don't tell me what I'm feeling or saying. You don't know me.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

...and what say you??

Subscribe to coloredboy by Email