Gannked from my Tumblr, cuz this is where I am right now
I can only hope and pray that people don’t answer this violence with more violence.
You know, I wish Whites would quit demanding that Blacks remain, nice, quiet and calm in the face of your perpetual violence towards us.
My parents taught me when I was preschool age, “Don’t wanna take a lick? Don’t pass a lick!”
You know what has dragged White people the meagre length you all have come on racial issues? Fear. Fear, plain and simple. Fear that those protesting darkies will start doing MORE than marching, singing and sitting in if those Civil Rights bills don’t get passed in DC. Fear that you noticed some of them already giving up on non-violent resistance and that sentiment will spread, especially in the cities and in the North where racism and Jim Crow played out differently than in the rural South.
But the niggers have been relatively quiet since then. Only one major riot since the 60s and 70s. So now you all think we’re a bunch of punks and you can slowly bring back the pseudo-slavery that was Jim Crow in a much more sneaky and conniving way through the back window under cover of night.
So maybe we SHOULD start meeting violence with violence because it seems to be the only language you all understand, that and seeing your money gone. You haven’t gotten the message that “Black people are human” that we’ve been trying to drum into your willfully ignorant brains for 400 years (that’s for CENTURIES, guys) via persuasion, reasonable discourse and yes, even minding our “tone” and talking all nice-nice to you about race. But you DO seem to react to “Those niggers’ll kill you if you fuck with them, so DON’T!”
I’m not even angry anymore so much as depressingly frustrated. I’m coming to see that making Whites a big part of our racial uplift as Black people is a huge mistake. You will retard our progress immeasurably. You will be a millstone around our necks, an anchor dragging us down and greatly hampering our efforts. We will always have to stop and continually explain the same basic, Racism 101 stuff to you over and over again. We will have to make sure you constantly feel good about yourselves. We will have to Mammy you throughout the whole journey. We will have to drag you, kicking and screaming, every millimeter of the way. And quite frankly, it ain’t worth it. You are not worth all this energy and toil.
You all see racial harmony and progress as us getting along with YOU. As those pesky colored stopping being so, well, COLORED, and at least striving to be just like you because you all don’t seem to be able to deal with anyone not just like you. We should continue trying to convince YOU to love us and let us into your clubhouse. I bet you all can’t even imagine racial progress movements without you involved if not at the center of them. It should always be about “How can we get White folks to love us?” instead of “How can be best isolate and protect ourselves from White violence, individual AND institutional?” The latter basically is about REMOVING you from the equation like isolating a disease or cancerous tissue in a body. And more and more, I think people of color would have more success with the latter than the former. We’d definitely have more control over the latter than the former.
My frustration comes from looking at my own life. I’ve spent about 25 years of my life trying to get Whites to understand that my Black ass had just as much value and worth as their pasty ones. The miserable return I’ve gotten on the incredible investment I’ve made in terms of emotional, psychological and physical safety of putting myself out there has thoroughly discouraged me. And yes, I was nice, reasonable, watched my tone only to encounter stopped ears that didn’t want to listen. I learn that it doesn’t matter how the message is delivered if it’s unwanted from the get go.
When you all exhort Blacks not to return violence for the violence you continually bestow upon us, you’re telling us you want to continue dealing out licks without having to take any. Like I said, I learned differently. If I wanted to go around being violent to people, being an asshole to folks, well, I cannot be at all surprised or shocked when I get some of that treatment back if in nothing more as the other party defending themselves against my actions. Whites don’t want any negative consequences for the bullshit they continually, unthinkingly put out there. Sorry, that is WAY too much to be asking of your fellow humans. Blacks are not gods nor saints. And we do not have some greater or higher moral obligation to continue taking slaps in the face without dealing out a few punches ourselves.
What you’re seeing more and more of from people of color is that simply, we’re past sick and tired of your shenanigans. More and more of us are simply giving up on White people as anything more than oppressors. We’re giving up trying to build coalitions with you because the vast majority of them end in massive racefail on your parts. We’re even giving up TALKING to you all about race online because that is an ordeal. White folks in America obviously think they can go it alone without anyone’s help. Good luck with that.
Now, I bet I’m going to get a lot of White whine basically trying to convince people of color, especially Blacks, to continue to focus on, include and center Whites in our racial struggles. I’m going hear about all the “good White folk” that were nice to us ungrateful darkies over the years. I want to point out the ratio of “good White folk” (and how are we even defining that? Too many Whites want that moniker simply for not having called a Black person a nigger that day) versus all the other White folk, most of whom were NOT neo-Nazis or Klansmen, but everyday White people. White people who saw themselves as good, decent, Christian folk even as they raped slaves, or beat and punished their female slaves for being raped (as many White women did in the antebellum South) saying that they were sluts who lured pure, innocent White men into iniquity even though they were barely 13 and their rapist may have been old enough to be their grandfather. Whites who saw themselves as upstanding even as they smilingly posed for pictures under a lynched, Black body. Whites who believed they were the salt of the earth even as they held and hurled the bile that was in their hearts. As is the case today.
But, day by day, your case is wearing more and more thin. The record of modern progressive Whites in dismantling White supremacist racism has been pitiful compared to those of the past you all love to compare yourselves to and you’re being asked to do a LOT less than what those folks have risked.
We are not a people of infinite patience. And them shits are running out fast for you all.
I take it back. I AM angry, sad and frustrated as all hell! But I mean every damn word I wrote here.
You know, I wish Whites would quit demanding that Blacks remain, nice, quiet and calm in the face of your perpetual violence towards us.
My parents taught me when I was preschool age, “Don’t wanna take a lick? Don’t pass a lick!”
You know what has dragged White people the meagre length you all have come on racial issues? Fear. Fear, plain and simple. Fear that those protesting darkies will start doing MORE than marching, singing and sitting in if those Civil Rights bills don’t get passed in DC. Fear that you noticed some of them already giving up on non-violent resistance and that sentiment will spread, especially in the cities and in the North where racism and Jim Crow played out differently than in the rural South.
But the niggers have been relatively quiet since then. Only one major riot since the 60s and 70s. So now you all think we’re a bunch of punks and you can slowly bring back the pseudo-slavery that was Jim Crow in a much more sneaky and conniving way through the back window under cover of night.
So maybe we SHOULD start meeting violence with violence because it seems to be the only language you all understand, that and seeing your money gone. You haven’t gotten the message that “Black people are human” that we’ve been trying to drum into your willfully ignorant brains for 400 years (that’s for CENTURIES, guys) via persuasion, reasonable discourse and yes, even minding our “tone” and talking all nice-nice to you about race. But you DO seem to react to “Those niggers’ll kill you if you fuck with them, so DON’T!”
I’m not even angry anymore so much as depressingly frustrated. I’m coming to see that making Whites a big part of our racial uplift as Black people is a huge mistake. You will retard our progress immeasurably. You will be a millstone around our necks, an anchor dragging us down and greatly hampering our efforts. We will always have to stop and continually explain the same basic, Racism 101 stuff to you over and over again. We will have to make sure you constantly feel good about yourselves. We will have to Mammy you throughout the whole journey. We will have to drag you, kicking and screaming, every millimeter of the way. And quite frankly, it ain’t worth it. You are not worth all this energy and toil.
You all see racial harmony and progress as us getting along with YOU. As those pesky colored stopping being so, well, COLORED, and at least striving to be just like you because you all don’t seem to be able to deal with anyone not just like you. We should continue trying to convince YOU to love us and let us into your clubhouse. I bet you all can’t even imagine racial progress movements without you involved if not at the center of them. It should always be about “How can we get White folks to love us?” instead of “How can be best isolate and protect ourselves from White violence, individual AND institutional?” The latter basically is about REMOVING you from the equation like isolating a disease or cancerous tissue in a body. And more and more, I think people of color would have more success with the latter than the former. We’d definitely have more control over the latter than the former.
My frustration comes from looking at my own life. I’ve spent about 25 years of my life trying to get Whites to understand that my Black ass had just as much value and worth as their pasty ones. The miserable return I’ve gotten on the incredible investment I’ve made in terms of emotional, psychological and physical safety of putting myself out there has thoroughly discouraged me. And yes, I was nice, reasonable, watched my tone only to encounter stopped ears that didn’t want to listen. I learn that it doesn’t matter how the message is delivered if it’s unwanted from the get go.
When you all exhort Blacks not to return violence for the violence you continually bestow upon us, you’re telling us you want to continue dealing out licks without having to take any. Like I said, I learned differently. If I wanted to go around being violent to people, being an asshole to folks, well, I cannot be at all surprised or shocked when I get some of that treatment back if in nothing more as the other party defending themselves against my actions. Whites don’t want any negative consequences for the bullshit they continually, unthinkingly put out there. Sorry, that is WAY too much to be asking of your fellow humans. Blacks are not gods nor saints. And we do not have some greater or higher moral obligation to continue taking slaps in the face without dealing out a few punches ourselves.
What you’re seeing more and more of from people of color is that simply, we’re past sick and tired of your shenanigans. More and more of us are simply giving up on White people as anything more than oppressors. We’re giving up trying to build coalitions with you because the vast majority of them end in massive racefail on your parts. We’re even giving up TALKING to you all about race online because that is an ordeal. White folks in America obviously think they can go it alone without anyone’s help. Good luck with that.
Now, I bet I’m going to get a lot of White whine basically trying to convince people of color, especially Blacks, to continue to focus on, include and center Whites in our racial struggles. I’m going hear about all the “good White folk” that were nice to us ungrateful darkies over the years. I want to point out the ratio of “good White folk” (and how are we even defining that? Too many Whites want that moniker simply for not having called a Black person a nigger that day) versus all the other White folk, most of whom were NOT neo-Nazis or Klansmen, but everyday White people. White people who saw themselves as good, decent, Christian folk even as they raped slaves, or beat and punished their female slaves for being raped (as many White women did in the antebellum South) saying that they were sluts who lured pure, innocent White men into iniquity even though they were barely 13 and their rapist may have been old enough to be their grandfather. Whites who saw themselves as upstanding even as they smilingly posed for pictures under a lynched, Black body. Whites who believed they were the salt of the earth even as they held and hurled the bile that was in their hearts. As is the case today.
But, day by day, your case is wearing more and more thin. The record of modern progressive Whites in dismantling White supremacist racism has been pitiful compared to those of the past you all love to compare yourselves to and you’re being asked to do a LOT less than what those folks have risked.
We are not a people of infinite patience. And them shits are running out fast for you all.
I take it back. I AM angry, sad and frustrated as all hell! But I mean every damn word I wrote here.