Black Witch

I have basically spent this whole past week just forever in my feelings. Nothing but irritated and pissed. It’s one thing to have you city make national news, it’s definitely different when the neighborhood you were brought up in is the reason the city is basically on lockdown. And why morons would stop talking like they know how it is in Sandtown when they’re going off info they learned from HBO and reports written by people who are also not from Baltimore. Yes, reading relatively objective reports about the plight here is nice but your 20 minute read is not going to trump my personal experience, no matter how much you want it to. I was born and raised there. You could got to an Ivy, take a bunch of classes, get a degree and you’ll still have no idea compared to my actual, lived experience. That is just how it is. Baltimore is a whole lot more than Old Bay and Hon bullsh*t. That’s not even really Baltimore, that’s a White-washed, gentrified view of Baltimore because they don’t like that Baltimore is 64% Black and only 12% White. With effort from the Mayor(s, plural because Dixon was bad, O’Malley was awful, we haven’t had many good Mayors that actually care about Baltimoreans more than yuppie outsiders), there has been a healthy move to Whiten up Baltimore as much as possible.

I think the only White person that has been interacting with Baltimore and actually was not a douche about all that has been happening is the Manager for the O’s and why he closed the game to the public:

He gets it. He wasn’t being a douche, he was comfortably understanding by saying that this is beyond baseball and that he’s not going to say more than that because he has no way to relate to the experience of the people rioting and protesting. See? He made a comment that wasn’t disrespectful, agitating, exploiting, or White-Saviorist. It is ok to say, “Look, I’ve no bones in the game, all I know is that this is a big problem and that’s for sure. Baseball is just a game, this is a burst of a bunch of problems.”

Basically, this Baltimore club song is basically how I’ve been feeling all this week

This is more accurate to Baltimorean culture. We’re not really into outsiders telling our tales and speaking for us. At all. We don’t like exploiters, people who don’t genuinely care and just are talking about Baltimore because they’re tired of talking about Ferguson or to look like they’re up on current events. Everyone who is not from Baltimore wants to do a think piece about Baltimore, a city they have zip idea about. If all you knew about Baltimore was basically stuff that starred White people (or, if it was negative, Black people) such as The Wire, Hairspray and Old Bay, then maaaaaaaaybe you should just go back to watching Game of Thrones or something.

Everyone has been getting on my nerves, especially non-local media. I haven’t bothered to look at CNN, FOX News (how did you manage to come to Sandtown and not get your media truck firebombed? Not even catch a rock to the temple. Or a cracked camera?), even Wild Hunt – who asked me for my take – I’ll touch on that in a minute – tried to get in on the calamity as if they’re New York Times or they actually care. Even us Baltimoreans know we’re just activist groups heat of the week, flavor of the day. I haven’t even looked at The Root, which is a Black publication that usually is pretty on the level about things but again, I’m sensitive because as I said before, I’m from that neighborhood so I take it very straight to heart. Like, Mondawmin Mall? I grew up near that mall, my paternal grandfather’s house would have only been maybe 5 or 6 doors away from where the rioters started to break apart and scatter. That mall also started to gentrify a little, which served in part to getting its windows dropped. Remember, we don’t like exploiters. I’m pretty sure they’re clear with that now and if not, Baltimoreans are very good at strong reminders.

The only media people that contacted me was just Wild Hunt. Merely because I am in Baltimore, I’m close enough to the destruction. The person contacting didn’t even know (how, I don’t know because I made it very clear that I am more than just a Baltimorean but also from that neighborhood in the last post), that I am a native Baltimore and from the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood and gave me among the smaller snippets whereas some random person in bum-f*ck Maryland gets a whole paragraph cited and another person in New Jersey. I am probably the only Black person (aside from a quip from Ray Lewis) that was even mentioned in the article. Dude, the writer even wanted to include my MLK quote with snarky part to White liberals, the only reason why I’d post the quote interestingly edited out (I wonder why…oh wait, MLK quotes attract White folks like metal to magnets!) and I had to get a bit snippy to get it out. I told her to mention that I wrote about Whitewashing and gentrification. That didn’t make it to the final cut. It was just labeled “impassionate” (nice word/code for “angry”). I’m actually from here but I get among the least mention. And Wild Hunt doesn’t really try to be that “Oh, here are non-Pagan current events”. Maybe they should try to stick with more Pagan life stuff. The only reason why I agreed was because it isn’t like the writer was going to try hard to find someone else who was Black and from Baltimore…or from Baltimore…or possibly even Black. Now, it isn’t that any Black person can automatically talk about what happened in Baltimore (I mean, Don Lemon should have proved that), but at least there would be a higher likelihood of the person saying “Institutionalize racism” in opposed to saying the super soft “Ohhhh, those pooooooor Black people being murdered. Gives me a sad”.

And speaking of media inaccurately depicting Baltimore, how about that low key Whitewashing between “peaceful protester” and “rioter”. The City Paper posted a gaggle of White people whenever demonstrating peaceful protesters.This is one of many, maaaaaaaaaany times where when you would see people talk about “peaceful protesters” they usually would pan to crowds mixed with White folks…or just pan to the White person in the crowd just standing there amongst the Black folks. But if they’re trashing cop cars and wrecking stuff, it’s All Black Everything. Quick tip: Stop centering White people to make any movement “relevant” or worth caring about. Minorities get edged out of their own movements all the time, it really isn’t fair. This movement isn’t about them. At all. If you have to see a White person somewhere in there to justify a movement, then that’s pretty bigoted. They’re not affected at all by racially charged murders. It’s nice they care but no one needs to put them at the forefront to validate a movement and to depict a “peaceful protester”, that is certain. That is sneakily dehumanizing the Black protesters as barbaric unless there is a White person to symbolize order when really there were definitely White looters. They can be just as bad if not worse because they’re not acting out from being oppressed for decades, just taking an opportunity because they figured even if they hit a ton of stores, media will just show a news reel of a Black folks doing it instead.

This article in the City Paper, which is a surprise for me because CP doesn’t tend to reflect the city it represent but even a broken clock is right twice a day, written by Helena Hicks, titled “Helena Hicks Talks about Institutional Neglect in Freddie’s Gray Neighborhood” accurately depicts the problems in Sandtown-Winchester. I strongly agree with this elder, who also participated in the 1955 sit-in at Read’s drug store in Baltimore as a college student, I recommend reading because as I have said this whole time, to best understand how things are, ask someone who actually is from the area. And the most striking part is that, despite Hicks and I come from two different generations, we have many of the same complaints.

“Sandtown-Winchester has just been left to its own devices all these years, and the devices unfortunately have been destructive ones.”

Anyone from there would tell you this. It’s nicknamed “Crazytown” for a reason. It practically the wild west there. A prison without bars, a concentration camp without electric fences.

“[Since the 40s] You had the gangs starting, you had the murders, you had a drug cartel. There’s never been any justice for people who have committed murders there. As for the Western District police station, it was well known you buy those cops off for $5. It’s had a history of violence, and violence over drugs, since the 1940s.”

Heeeeey, didn’t I say in my last piece I remember drugs being sold on the steps of the Western District police station? Thought I was exaggerating, huh? This, everyone, is the reason why I absolutely abhor the drug trade in all forms, all who participate in it and why I have a therapist. And PTSD. And why the current drug laws gives me the shakes, they’re growing so soft. It was pretty bad there. Still is. What everyone saw on Monday is only an iota of what I saw growing up.

“In the years since, virtually no resources have ever been put into the neighborhood, and it became a drug neighborhood. My sister, Lillian Jones, fought to have something different for the kids in those projects, and the Lillian S. Jones Recreation Center there is named for her. But she died, and the center just fell apart.”

I wasn’t raised in the projects, but I was raised across the street from them on the 1500 block of N. Mount St. I can attest to how bad it got. It was swarmed in drugs and, in turn, cyclical problems such as violence. And anything that has any strain of good in it doesn’t last long. Ever. I remember when the rec. centers got closed. I remember Central Rosemont, which got replaced by PAL, a recreation program that the police thought up (and failed), and then got shut down completely. My mom helped create the protests against City Hall about the shutting down of rec centers, which helped extended the life for a while until the City just stopped caring and did what it wanted.

“The city has consistently done nothing to help this area.”

Didn’t I just say that?

“There is no active drug rehabilitation program. You have nothing in terms of education, nothing to build self pride or desire to rise above the situation there.”

My mom did the smart thing and moved my sister and I out there when we were in our pre-teen. For me, I have a burning hatred of the people who made Sandtown such a terrible place with the strength of a million suns, so that has convinced me to never put myself back there. I just didn’t (and still don’t) want to go back there. I built self-pride in how smart I am, and that was tough in and of itself. That’s why I’m so cocky about my intelligence. And with a very, very, very obscenely low bullsh*t threshhold, as my steady readers have probably noticed. Especially from people who were raised from a higher social station than I was.

“You don’t have any job training programs. People don’t finish school, they don’t make any money, they have nothing to do with their time. Torn-down houses. No food stores. Vacant houses. Open drug markets. 24 hours a day.”

Even the old Stop, Shop, and Save that I grew up with, the only actual market in the area, just closed recently, if Google Maps showed me correctly. Actually, Google Maps has not even been behind my house on the teeny street since 2008. Lolz. Even Google doesn’t want to know.

“We set up child day care in Sandtown. It ran well for a while, and then we lost funding and got kicked out. Nothing has worked because the city won’t invest permanently in that neighborhood. It once had responsible citizens, and it still does, but you don’t have enough of them and they have no direction and no City Hall support.”

Yeap, that sounds about right. If it’s a good thing for Sandtown, the plug will get pulled on it faster than fast.

“There was the Empowerment Zone in the 1990s, and then it dissipated. The developers got a hold of that. It was all about how they could use the neighborhood and the money that was coming in on federal grants to supposedly help that area. The federal grant money dried up; it never did a whole lot of good anyway.”

I was raised in the 90s. Basically, people got greedy. Tried to gentrify Sandtown a little (basically go, “Let’s move in White people, that’s the only way we think a neighborhood is worth saving!”), and something on the calculator must have said, “You’re going to have a lot of dead White people, just leave it alone.” That and greedy people are greedy. The money was seen to help the area but the people in charge most likely saw the money as a free payday.

“The police have been a part of the problem and not the solution in that area since I was a child. Former Mayor Martin O’Malley didn’t help. He started the ‘zero tolerance’ policy, so half of the people who were hanging around got locked up….Plus, they put the bottom of the barrel down [in Sandtown]. Not good teachers, not good police – and if they get anybody good down there, they don’t last.“

Bolding is mine. I have been telling people this time and time again: There’s no room for good guys down there. The reason why the cops are so ruthless down there is because the people they have to get are more ruthless than them. Even though in the different neighborhood, Oliver, the police didn’t murder the Dawson family. Here in Sandtown, things are downright atrocious, there’s no room to play by the rules. Absolutely none. If there were, they would quickly be called “loopholes”. It’s not fair to the people caught in between but that’s simply just how it is. And how it will be, none of this media circus will affect a thing, sadly. Trust me on that. It’s just a heinous cat and mouse game.

“It’s possibly to do something constructive in Sandtown-Winchester, but you’ve got to get City Hall to understand the mess they’ve made, take responsibility for it, and start planning to go in another direction….Nobody is looking at how we got here and what do we need to do to turn it in a different direction. They just concentrate knee-jerk reactions to whatever’s happening in the present.”

Like a riot. A loud one at that. Classic move of City Hall. Media is already giving them a heaping of help by milking this “Black Lives Matter” stuff in hopes for a Pulitzer or to look progressive. Just focus on the now, not the future and definitely not the past.

“Marches won’t do it.”

Are you me? Ye gods, it sounds like something I would say.

“I don’t have any faith in these ministers leading things. They’ve been there all this time and haven’t done anything. They just want a platform. You need to understand the history.”

Sounds nearly like me.

“There are people who know what’s going on and could be asked for help. But City Hall is not going to ask for that. [Mayor] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake doesn’t think anybody over 50 knows anything that she can use.”

The mayor also has a tendency to think the same of folks who can’t pass a paper bag test. A White person tell her that she’s on fire, she’d run for the fire extinguisher. A Black person tell her she’s on fire, she’d just remark, “The weatherman said we’d have summer temperatures today. You just are confused.”

“They think nobody knows anything but them, and they have the answers and they’re going to resolve it.”

Their solution: A neighborhood is only worth saving if there are White people living in it. Time to gentrify! Then we’ll pump in much and desperately needed resources.

“And they’re not. It’s just going to get worse and worse.”

Basically what I’ve been saying.

“History repeats itself, and we’re about to repeat something very bad if we don’t get in there and do something fast.”

Yes, it can get worse than this. Way worse.

“I’ve tried to pass the baton, but many young people don’t see any future. And I understand why they don’t see it: They don’t get many examples of good things that are happening, so they don’t believe that it’s possible….I think there is some hope. But it’s getting harder and harder to find people who believe that and it’s been harder and harder to point out where there is some reason to hope.”

Sounds about right. The future of Sandtown is pretty bleak. And I’ve seen little to convince me that it will get better for the residents of Sandtown ever. That’s the super sad part. It would only be possible if people actually cared and tried to break the cyclical damage and hurt there. Buuuuuut that’s not happening for a while. Once the cameras are off of Penn-North, and the rest of Sandtown, it’s back to business as usual.

I had a chance to read the Cracked article “Ferguson, Eric Garner and Why Death Should Outrage Us”. I was hesitant because usually Cracked, albeit a fairly funny publication, tends to show in more ways than it thinks that its target audience is White and middle class (and usually male. Only recently have they started featuring pieces that acknowledge women exist as people and not walking trophies). Then I thought, “Eh, I might as well read this article so I can figure out if I need to delete the app and reject the site rather than play yet another game of Schrodinger’s Racist.”

The article wasn’t thaaaaaaaat bad (it was penned by a White author, I’m not expecting greatness when they write on race. I’m relatively placated if they just avoid using the n-word and don’t try to validate stereotypes since that seems such so herculean a task, humanizing people as people) but the part that struck me was “Until this month, I had no idea that black moms teach their sons how to survive police encounters. It’s called ‘The Talk,’ and black boys get it as soon as they start hitting puberty….” It only struck me because A) Black kids of both genders start getting the Race talk when they’re usually in elementary school, no need to play it off like Black women and girls are so safe in the hands of cops and society. At least Black boys don’t have to worry about rape and murder at the hands of law enforcement. Or from White individuals in general. B) Boys do get more of the “how to act around cops” talk because they are targeted by officers more but both genders are reminded heavily that people are going to treat them differently, and for the worse, just because of their skintone and absolutely nothing else. You’re explained to that you’ll be followed in stores, passed up for jobs, pulled over a lot more, treated unnecessarily meaner and instantly distrusted the second you’re seen all because of your skin color. And that even if the person says, “I don’t see color”, it really means, “I don’t see you  as a person, acknowledging your different heritage makes me uncomfortable so I’ll blatantly ignore it.”  And that despite all this special behavior just to avoid death, White folks are supposed to tell us whenever it suits them that “racism is over” and then act surprised when they find it isn’t and start squawking to everyone else… who already knew and forever said so. Come to think of it, it shouldn’t be too surprising that now Cracked saw race and current events as relevant and therefore want to hyper focus on it.

In the race talk, you’re also taught how to navigate those experiences so you can at least reduce your chances of turning up missing and/or dead: What neighborhoods you can be in and which are sundown towns, who to trust, how to dress, what and how to eat, what speed to run at, how to never wear a hoodie (I have walked through rain with my head uncovered despite having a hood on both my shirt and coat since I was younger, kinda don’t want to end up dead. My umbrella collection is bananas, though), how to talk (and be reminded that you could talk better than the person judging you, you’re still subjected to JAN* syndrome), how to tell when the White folks are going from “Normal, level-headed” to “you scare me, you’re going to die” or “We’re not letting you leave. Not effortlessly breathing, anyway”.

When I was a kid, my mom showed me this picture from the Civil Rights movement from a dark blue textbook to help illustrate her point:

White feminists, you’re probably staring at your auntie, grandmother and/or mom. So nice most of y’all kept up the tradition and with persistence! #AllWomenMatter, amiright? Or nah?

I remember being confused by the picture because I didn’t know why the lady in the back was so upset at the lady holding the schoolbooks and looking like a fellow student. This was the during the “Little Rock Nine” integration and the White woman was screaming “B*TCH!” at the Elizabeth Eckford. Kinda like what happens now, but on Twitter and Tumblr. And the foul screaming chick would probably have on a “This is what a Feminist looks like” shirt on in her selfies and avi. Mom took this moment to explain how racism works and that the woman in the back was yelling because she didn’t want Eckford going to her school purely because she was Black and nothing else. This was her springboard into explaining how we don’t live in a society that is very fair and that I could be treated really badly – even though I was an elementary school child – because I’m Black. She explained that nothing was wrong with me, this is just how White people are and always have been, seemingly. She framed it as, “They’re just mean because they think they’re better than us.” Of course, she also mentioned how sometimes other minorities who aren’t Black may treat us bad but that’s learned behavior from Whiteness being seen as value and we’re the opposite of Whiteness. She continued that while not all of them are bad, you have to be cautious of the majority of them because they could hurt you and even the ones who say they’re the “good guys” will just let it happen.

Just to pause for a moment: For White allies that are probably whinging right now and sobbing into their Stephen Colbert books, this is why White allies are – and should always be until vastly proven otherwise – under intense scrutiny. You may not have thrown a slur at a Black person for just existing but making excuses for the person who did or keeping quiet while it happens is no better. Also, you don’t have to be a card carrying member of the Klan to crack an Ebola, “That’s so ghetto” or welfare queen joke. Notice you don’t have one. Alright, moving on.

Mom continued teaching about slavery and how our family traveled up the South and rested in Maryland as well as what job folks in my family had, such as dayworkers**. Also, she talked about the many successes of Black individuals such as Benjamin Banneker and Rosa Parks as well as what it was like growing up in during the Civil Rights movement (My mom was 10 when Dr. King was shot). She explained to me how the riots and protests happened and how, pretty much, everything repeats itself.

So, yeah, it must be nice to be so oblivious to the “A whole group of people wanna ruin or kill you so bad for something so superficial, you feel like you live in a disturbing version of The Twilight Zone,” up until a month ago.  I wish I could say that. And remember, I’m not a boy. Nor was I close to even being a tween, I think I was around the second grade or so. I had to have this talk because if you didn’t have the talk, you could act wrong in a future encounter and wind up dead because you didn’t know that being Black meant “walking threat”. None of my White friends know what having the Race Talk was, I discovered that in college from talking to a group of my friends. All the minority kids – the Indian kids, the Black kids, the Mid-East kids, we were all talking about when we got the Race talk and all my White friends were looking around, completely lost but wanting to participate. They had no clue that we gotta get the “So, this is what it means when a White person follows you in a store or on the street and/or start saying crazy things out of the clear blue and how to navigate” chat. They were surprised because they thought, “But, Dr. King,” and how his actions (which resulted in him getting shot in the throat on a second story balcony in a murder supported by the US government) should have magically solved everything. Newp. Or else I wouldn’t have been stopped by that cop who defensively stood behind his open car door with a hand on his pistol when he stopped me while I was waiting for the bus on college campus, heavy bookbag in tow because “I might try to case that warehouse over there.” All this, despite being dressed in casual cybergoth, complete with the red and white hairfalls.

These exact same falls. Yep. I totes look like a criminal, blending in effortlessly.

They don’t get told “Here’s how you act so a group of people don’t see you as a threat, regardless of how much you accomplish, your clothes, mannerism or your cultural status.” The kicker: they don’t even mind mouthing off to cops or reciting various amendments because no one had to tell them that their skintone made all that Constitutional stuff null and void.  Some still couldn’t buy into the fact that the government would actively hurt American people. Talk about living in a fantasy world.

I get the Cracked post is supposed to be a “For White People, By White People” type post, which is nice in some respects because White folks are supposed to some heavy lifting in dismantling their own prejudices and the institutions they framed around them but it still is irritating. Part of me wants to go, “Oh, c’mon, no1currs. Can you go back to your other funny stuffs?” It’s like this stuff is inescapable. Again, on one hand, this is good because everyone needs to know that racism has never left, they just stopped being willfully and actively oblivious. On the other hand, I just want a break. White folks may love to discuss this stuff like it’s NFL fantasy football but that’s because they’re not at all affected. They don’t get reports of White people being murdered after being harassed by cops, complete with HD pictures and video, and people telling them that they’re delusional for thinking there may be a trend. There’s no loss in hyper examining things, even if they get it super wrong. Nothing in these string of deaths is scary to them, just fascinating and something else they can go Kony 2012 about. It’s like watching a new soldier dumped in a warzone, completely enthused and alert because he’s played so much Call of Duty and Modern Warfare, he still thinks he’s still inside a video game.

Basically, it is not to questionable to wonder if White people are talking about these grievances mainly because of either White saviorism (which is what fueled Kony 2012 and currently many universities’ Alternative Spring Break and trips to Africa and Asia) or because right now it’s the hip thing to walk around with a #BlackLivesMatter placard, possibly because nothing better is on TV. It’s reasonable to wonder if it will be a “Won’t someone please think of the White people,” moment because for actual change to occur, everyone has to be on board and that includes White folks actually taking a critical eye to the systems they uphold, the privileges, how it all functions in overt and subvert ways (usually subvert, such as micro-aggressions and “playful” jokes)  annnnnnd that is probably never going to happen. At least not for the longest of times. It’s like telling a rich person to give up their Bugatti for a Ford, simply out of the goodness of their own heart. Not happening. It’s hard to want to give up a system that actively benefits and rewards  you…but being really kumbayah and whingy about that system is good enough because feel-good lip service. That doesn’t require any mental heavy lifting or even a real sense of caring. It’s like that aforementioned rich man,  he won’t want to give up his Bugatti but he’ll fuss about how it’s so terrible that economic inequality is awful and how everyone should be able to own a Bugatti and how brands like Ford and Chevy are so humble and the icons of the hard working American…while getting into his Bugatti and driving away. After all is said and done, White folks tend to resume business as usual because, again, this is probably horseplay for them until the weather finally warms up and then the conversation can move to beach-related subjects.

At least the writer for the Cracked article, Kristi Harrison, didn’t act like the Covenant of the Goddess  because they made a pretty bad statement that is much more predictable of what White folks say in racial issues.

I don’t care of doing a close reading since what they wrote is totally expected. I had a feeling they would pull this, so glad I never joined. However, you guys can and here’s the Culture Bingo Board so you can play at home. Great for outings, parties and single players, ages 5 and up:

CoG most likely will backpedal like crazy so just keep this handy when they start with the fake apologies and the flame wars that will most assuredly be in their Facebook fan page’s comments.

Next week is The Arts!: Language!
– Hello Talk
– Live Mocha
– Talking translator
– and more! (that will be language specific)

After that is Ask Black Witch, send in your questions. Good questions are appreciated, bad questions are eviscerated.

*JAN syndrome: “Just Another N***er” syndrome is when you could be greatly accomplished and even be as non-stereotypical as possible but you’re still seen as just another porch-monkey, you just know how to talk better than the rest, therefore, must be ultimately distrusted and taken down a few pegs at all cost.

** Day workers are Black (or just any minority woman) who work as mammies/nannies/maids in White women homes to help them take care of their kids…y’know, while White women were clamoring about how they are treated so poorly because they have to stay at home and raise kids because women don’t have the right to work. They were half right. White women had to stay home, but Black women always had to work…usually in their homes.

So, it’s been tough trying to post new stuff with all that’s been happening as of recently. I honestly was working on a new post about frost magick (sorry everyone who’ve been waiting for magick and spellwork posts, y’all going to have to wait more).

Frankly, I feel very frustrated. While what happened in Ferguson is really an everyday occurrence for being Black, it really is frustrating because these stories are really getting way too common. I mean, it’s always been like this, that you can’t really do anything around cops or other forms of authority without risking a bullet, but it’s getting really tiring. And while this is tiring, White allies make it worse.

Worse. Not better.

I have seen everywhere from Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook, White allies forever keeping silent about what is going on or continually bumping their gums about how it is a “human being” issue and not a Black issue. Brah, I’m getting so sick of that I can’t even see straight. Does empathy for specifically Black people bother you that much? Because I don’t know of a story when a White person have been shot by a cop, aggressive homeowner or random vigilante, completely unarmed/hands up/coming home from the store/needing help from a car accident. And these stories I reference are the ones that made it to media. There’s thousands more like them. A White person is automatically considered human before the gun is drawn, a Black person has to have a national debate on personhood even well after they’re dead.

Hell, being White while criminal gets you on the cover of the Rolling Stones magazine, taken alive to see a trial date, get to be talked about as “smart”, “bright”, “promising future”, “great grades”, “attractive but mentally ill”. It’s always mentally ill isn’t it, too? It’s never “terrorist”, “Mass murderer” or “thug”. It’s “mentally ill”, like the dude was normal during some point of history but then they went completely coo-coo.

Imagine if it were a Black cop that fatally shot a White kid. Man, that cop would have been saying goodbye to his career and hello to a jail cell if not an electric chair. Dude would have been demonized as a “thug”, a “ruthless cop”. There would have been “See? White people do experience racism” tv features everywhere. The kid shot would have been anglicized as a “good kid”, “great grades”, “promising life cut short”. And media wouldn’t go from “kid had no records” to “kid may have been involved in a strong arm robbery.”

And given the default human being in the West is a White person, White allies who pull the “Why aren’t we saying ‘human being’?” are actually saying “What about my feelings? Why is a Black person getting attention? It would be easier if we could have the option to imagine they were White.” If you want to say how race isn’t a factor in how you see people, why does it bother you when someone says they’re anything other than White? If you’re so colorblind, someone mentioning a Black person being harmed should be a non-issue because a Black person is a human being. No one is implying that a Black person and a human being aren’t the same thing…unless that’s really how the White ally feels deep down inside. Which, considering their actions, it wouldn’t be at all surprising. Just a bigot that simply tends to lean democrat.

Unless it’s about using Black life to further their own causes or to use as crude examples or as pawns for their own means because then they never avoid mentioning the fact someone is Black when it comes to that. It’s never “human being” then. Black is hyper emphasized like that’s all they notice. And as if that’s all we are.

Now it is fact that this issue is a Human Rights issue. That’s true. Black people should be able to have access to their basic human rights. Because they’re human beings. Thus, should be open to their human rights. White people, the ones who tout this erasure of race in favor of saying “human being”, don’t have to worry about their human rights being so much as dinged. No one is trying to take away their human rights. They still have access to better schools, food and resources, there’s no denying that.  They could bomb a marathon and wind up on Rolling Stones with a really appealing picture and entry. They could air out a movie theatre full of people and still get taken alive. Keep in mind, these are White folks doing very, very illegal things. Neither can say, “I’m innocent. I was just walking by.” Even Timothy McVeigh, who is solely responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, got better treatment than the innocent Black folks (men and women because despite Black girls are no safer) who have been gunned down or nearly murdered because of their skintone. It took them years to bake that guy and people were actually arguing that he shouldn’t be put to death because he’s a human being. What they meant was “He’s White, can’t possibly be that bad despite the glaring fact he’s a complete and total terrorist.” Innocent kid walking down the street? Totally fine to turn him into swiss cheese, even though he had his hands up. And to assassinate his character now that he’s dead and therefore can’t speak for himself, thus all the robbery accusations now.

The police are going to get dissolved in Ferguson. That’s not a good thing if you’re Black because your oppression just got upgraded from “cop” to “National Guard”. Before some White ally goes “But, what about Little Rock Nine?” What about how that was a rare thing (that’s why it was considered remarkable) because usually the National Guard gets summoned to do what the police can’t in weapons, manpower and might. And when it comes to race problems, that means folks are gonna be leaving protests in body bags. And it’s tiring to hear “White people live in Ferguson, too,” because they’re not targeted. At all. Unless they decide to march with Black protesters, no officer will look at them twice. Hey, they could march with Black protesters and the police will just filter past them to get to the Black people, even if it is the White person that is throwing Molotov cocktails and looting. I’m almost certain if one was too scared to walk off their porch because of the firefights, an officer would escort them to wherever they gotta go. They’re not in danger. It still is a race issue, no need to worry about the less-than-30% of the people who live there. How about the 70% who are acutely targeted? Now is not the time to go “Won’t someone please think of the White people?” because trust us, we’re thinking about you. About how you’re killing us, dismissing us, making it worse for us and still trying to make it about yourselves. Stop being so selfish because no White person is in danger. They got the National Guard protecting them whether they want it or not.

If White allies want to do something, how about not make it about them and their feelings? How about not attempting to erase the racial overtone of this situation as if it doesn’t matter? How about not supporting other White allies who say this type of stuff and refuse to listen to the Black people in your life, even if the only Black person you know of is a musician you follow on Twitter? How about noticing that Black person already means “human being” so you don’t have to mention the latter (unless you don’t see us as one)? How about not trying to use this moment to live out your dystopian dreams because this is not a video game or a movie? How about just treating us like people instead of things to make yourself look better?

White allies forever wanna say they’ll defend us, they just never had a moment to put that desire to functional use. Well, here is that shining moment to prove you’re not a lying, two faced, selfish, cold hearted and wildly bigoted, sack-of-crap yuppie you constantly depict yourself as. Time to see how much you’re really being honest about how you stand up for what is right, to always do the right thing. Time to step up to the plate and finally batter up.

Let’s see how fast you strike out.

So, I had to deal with a recent encounter of intra-race policing. In the middle of having a conversation with someone about rock music, a completely different person swooped into the conversation and completely interjected with “Are you Black?” We’re all in the same room, I’m not obscured annnnnnnnnd that was a really random comment when the subject was just on “Oh, so you like this band? Have you heard of this other band?” Ah, Black folks telling me how to be Black because they know near nothing at all. I immediately and snarkly responded “Uhhhh, I’m related to Marcus Garvey and my hair is in afro-puffs so maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe?”

The person responded “Who he?”

Are you freaking kidding me?

How is it this person wanted to police my Blackness because I listened to a Black created (albeit White washed) genre but she don’t even know who Marcus Garvey is. Dude, if you know less Black history than a White person, that’s when you put away your race police badge and keep to yourself. Of course, as with my experiences of dealing with dimwitted people, the person decided to keep talking. Despite the fact there are members of the Tea Party and hipsters more informed on Black history than her, person continues, “I hear you talk and you don’t sound like a Black person.”

If the person was smarter, the word they probably was looking for was “mushmouth”. I don’t sound like I dropped in straight from a minstrel show. Or “hoodrat”. Come on, I can speak 5 languages – excluding Latin – and have an English degree. Yah, I probably wouldn’t sound like an illiterate person. Reading books, particularly books with actual sustenance and even cultural value, can do that to the brain, even while Black. I know, shocker, right? It’s – it’s almost like I’m a multi-faceted person.

Let’s not even get into the fact this was when Shades of Ritual was coming out soooooo it isn’t exactly like I don’t spill ink on the subject of race to have some lesser informed bumpkin attempt to check me on something they themselves know way too little about. Thaaaaat irks me because it means all the stuff I say, the theories and explanations I implement, all that means, like, nada because being informed and simply different – not doing anything wrong like doing drugs or harming people – just being different, or simply considered different, apparently equates to “Whiteness”. Basically, when these folks think they are somehow fighting Whiteness by saying ostracizing things like “You sound White” or “How come you don’t talk like you Black?” (read: why do you sound literate? We’re supposed to be allergic to education.”), they’re actually upholding Whiteness through self-oppression and spreading that self-oppression around like SARS to others.

Then here came the kicker: “I’m not racist, I love White people, but just by listening to you , you don’t sound Black. It’s just -”

I’mma let you fill in the gap.

This person barged into a random conversation about music to call my racial identity into question as if that’s totally normal and then wants to go “I’m not racist.” Dude should have completed the sentence with “I just don’t like seeing Black people act like individuals with lives of their own. It bothers me because a White person hasn’t signed off on whether we can have access to it. That’s really important, ’cause how we know we Black without a White person to measure against as the yard stick?”

That’s upholding Whiteness, whether they like it or not. If you’re Black and hearing about a Black parasailer bothers you because “Black people don’t do that, we’re terrified of water”, that means you’re upholding Whiteness by saying that a) This Black person is not Black at all because only White people can have fun and do daring things, everyone else has to settle for the usual “crappy life of the Negro” narrative where it is filled with just about nothing fun but there’s an awful lot of stress so here you’re already ostracizing a person from their own culture just for following their own passions and b) This  person is an outsider because they’re too different, therefore somehow “not Black”.

Remember, Blackness isn’t theatre. You can be Black while astronaut, astronomer, parasailer, skateboarder, rock climber, aircraft trike pilot, whatever. You don’t magically turn White because you didn’t live in the projects, got a good education, got a job you actually like or listen to a Black created genre of music such as rock or blues or jazz (or basically nearly every genre but classical and polka). You’re still a Black person. Skin still dark. Nose still wide. You didn’t magically change into a White person because of your individual interests. Folks tend to forget that. That’s why I snarked to the person who asked me the really stupid question, “Oh man, I forgot I was Black. Lemme go rob somebody to redeem my Blackness. Totally forgot.”

That kinda made the person quiet for a minute. They went, “Not all Black people rob and are like that.”

“You said I wasn’t Black enough, I guess that’s what Blackness was. Thieving and acting like you came out of Birth of a Nation” Yes, this chick most likely didn’t know what Birth of a Nation was but who cares? Probably would have treated as a life guide of how to exist while Black whenever BET has slow days.

Look, if you don’t question someone’s racial identity of whether or not they’re Black when they’re joining gangs, committing crimes, living on a suffering wage or listen to gangsta rap but you do when they’re not, that means you equate Blackness with eternal hardship and to super limiting genres which further regurgitate those hardships – again, which upholds Whiteness because hey, why wait for a White person or institution to oppress you when you’ll do it yourself? What convenience. That way they don’t have to work or risk looking criminal because you did it all to yourself. Self-oppression/internalized racism does not fare well because it causes just as much damage as expressed racism – if not more since it is coming from the exact group you’re part of. You’ll hear such popular hits such as “You must think you White”, “Why are you such an Oreo?”, “You know Black folks don’t do [whatever it is that you’re doing]”. As aforementioned, these folks think they’re protecting a really monolithic and (usually toxic) idea of Black culture but man, they’re upholding Whiteness like there’s a trophy to get out of it because the Black culture they’re thinking of – that one is actually framed through the lens of Whiteness.

Whenever I get the “You don’t sound/act/look/think Black,” it’s interesting what folks count as “Black” and what is counted as “White”. It’s like a really screwed up game of Green Glass Door:

• Talking standard English or simply without a hood draw to your words = White. This mean you could be a Black person that was born and raised in England and because you have a British accent, you are somehow “Not Black” on the grounds of “Black people don’t talk like that.”
• Liking anything that isn’t in the narrow confines of what is considered Black culture today = White. Apparently, if you like rock – even if all the bands you listen to have all Black members  and the lone fact that rock was created by Black musicians – or anything that isn’t hip hop, gospel, R&B and/or Soul, somehow that means you’re not Black anymore.
• Not Christian? = Brainwashed by White folks to think that you’re White. Despite the pretty glaring fact that Christianity itself in the US was only “accepted” by Black folks because it was forced on to us as a psychological tactic to break all bonds and ties to identity and a sense of self so to make a “better” slave. (This doesn’t mean that Black Christians are slaves to a mentality but it would really help if they understood how they historically came upon the faith they have.) According to my experience, even simply praying or acknowledging African deities made you “White”. Whiiiiiiiiich doesn’t make sense, especially considering historical context.
• Dress in raver clothes? Like punk? Prefer to have glow in the dark dreads in every color possible to glow in the daytime and nighttime? White, White and White. And you can forget that whole “Black carefree girl” thing, it doesn’t include Black girls in alternative cultures such as Rivethead, Cyberpunk, Goth or even Lolita.

It’s really frustrating and that frustration can be ever so apparent. There are Black kids in alternative cultures or simply with unique interests to them who want nothing to do with mainstream Black culture because they pretty much got pushed out by all the “Not Black Enough” chiding they heard everywhere from Black people. That alone can make people internalize self-disdain, racism and even make someone engage in dangerous acts such as skin bleaching because they’re so convinced that what they’re seeing is all Black culture has to offer and what they’re getting. In making a choice backed by all the ostracizing, they rather not be associated with all that, even if it means using caustic chemicals on themselves. That’s a problem.

Race policing should be used for people to get accustomed to seeing a Black person not simply be a stereotype or to expand their interests outside the super-enforced monolithic depiction of Black culture. It shouldn’t be used as a method to convince people out of improving themselves or exploring the varied interests they may have because that doesn’t protect Black culture from being further infected with Whiteness, it actually reinforces Whiteness because what is usually sided with what is “Black” and what is usually sided with “White” is nearly night and day. And Blackness is constantly aligned with negative traits and aspects, even if those traits and aspects aren’t true.

Basically, it really annoys (practically infuriates) me to deal with Black folks being more prejudiced about Black people doing things than White folks are. Nothing good comes out of the mentality. At all. Being Black is not a performance where if you stop, it goes away. It’s part of who you are, no matter what.

So seriously, wipe off the burnt cork, it really isn’t necessary.