Check your privilege.
I know you see what’s happening. A lot of people are worried about businesses and looting. Giant corporations are fine. They’re insured for it. No need to worry about them just because you cannot quench your need for excessive consumption. They don’t give a damn about you or their workers by paying them a low means of living while the CEO sits on top with millions in his pocket pulling strings. More money has gone into those pockets during this pandemic. I say this first because of some white people I am “friends” with on this platform that don’t seem to grasp the world's reality right now. Did I catch your attention?
I only use social media in times of outrage and expressing my pain. Hoping you will understand what I’m trying to say and what this movement is all about. Whatever was your “normal” will never return. Open your mind and revel in the uncomfortable. To shake up the blissfully ignorant.
All my life, I have lived in a predominantly white area in North Carolina. Ever since elementary school, I have never felt Black enough. From a very young age, I learned that Black women will always be on the totem pole's bottom. In first grade, I remember crying to my mother that I wanted to be white, and I straightened my hair. My beautiful, luscious curls were relaxed, so I could fit the standard and no longer be teased. So I could blend among the pretty white girls and feel some worth. In middle school, it became worse. My Blackness was always this nuisance that I had to cast away. I was told, “You’re pretty for a Black girl,” “Your hair is much different than other Black girls; it’s not too oily.” “You are the whitest Black person I know!” I would laugh along because I didn’t know any better, and I was accepted. Why did I let the words of these irrelevant people affect me? I continued to hate myself but was determined to learn more about my culture.
Working in the restaurant industry, you get treated like shit in general, as a Black woman. Leaves you with pure trauma. In my first few months working as a server at Chili’s, I had a customer wanting to invite me to a klan meeting and lynch me because I forgot his jalapeños on a busy Saturday night. I had an elderly white man thank me for having a name that he could pronounce. I have had white guests ask me microaggressive questions with that sweet side of Southern snark, “You speak so well, where are you from?” “Well, what do your parents do?” “Where did you go to high school?” “Where do you go to college?” I’ve had people automatically assume that I attend NC A&T even before naming my university. You never know this pain. Your privilege will not allow it when I’m near white people. I have to put up this facade so you know I’m not a threat.
As I grew older, I moved away from who I was then and cultivated my own identity as a proud, queer Black woman, which took much soul searching, educating and researching, and surrounding myself with people who loved me. Not all Black people can experience this. Because they do not have a space of love but blatant hate, they are taught to hate themselves and never rise above it. It is an abusive complex.
To those who protested for ReopenNC, is your hair cut nice and fresh? Are you enjoying dining in at restaurants with Black and Brown people serving you the food you want and tipping 10% to 15%? Are your nails done? What did you fight for? Nothing. Your own greed consumes you, and you know nothing. What are you without racism? Are you any good?
What we fight for is our right to live and be seen. To exist in the same spaces as you without having the cops called for breathing the same air. We want you to see us as the humans we are and have every right of living in this country. Ever since you were born, you were indoctrinated to believe that the world you live in belongs to you in white superiority, on land stolen from Natives and built on the backs of Black bodies. For centuries this has been happening for way too long. We deserve to live. Always have. Why is this such a hard concept for you to comprehend?
You love our culture. The rap music our culture produces. Our aesthetics. To need to have the N-word roll off the tongue with such ease. The hair, my god, you love the hair! Judge us for the versatility too. The Black men and women you hide from your families but love to have as a sexual conquest and talk about with your friends. You love to watch The Help but don’t want to help us when the time comes. Why is that? Ah, because it’s too real for you.
Look at what the “authorities” are doing to those protesting peacefully. The violence does not begin until the police assert it. Check your media. Sitting and standing by one another in silence or even walking and chanting about our deadly police force's distress. Don’t be too quick to applaud cops kneeling with the protestors; it’s performative. Please call for action and end this. You have all of this unchecked power but go with the deadliest option to mutilate innocent lives. Do something with it. The time is now. To the white liberals who are protesting beside us, this is not the time to act out your performative woke wet dream and see this as an opportunity to loot whatever you want or prance around in some Joker fantasy. You are not for the cause, but merely using it as a stepping stone for your greed. Please stand with us and protect us or not at all.
As a beautiful and proud Black woman, I love defying the hate this country has dealt with me over and over. Our radical self-love is the key and weapon against the system; we plan to dismantle it. I love my Black mother, her Black mother, and her Black mother. I love my Black sisters and every single beautiful thing about them that this world deems unworthy. Existing in a world and living in a country that believes I don’t deserve it. I will continue to live my life fiercely. A fire has sparked within me, and she will not be smothered. We will not be broken. Slaughter us no more. Your hate will not break us.
We’re tired? Aren’t you?
