Growing up as a Black woman in the US meant constantly being told the same shit over and over and over again. Growing up in a mostly white area, especially, meant spending a lot of my childhood afraid of being seen as the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype. As mentioned in another article of mine, you basically fear making waves or losing friends, so you work to seem easygoing. You hear a lot of bullshit that you choose to agree with for the sake of your sanity, or you tell yourself often that “they probably didn’t mean it that way.”
Then, one day, you get sick of it, and you wind up turning into the Angry Black Woman. And here I am.
Not that I think the walking advertisements for birth control will listen, but I’m going to just go ahead and compile all of my rebuttals for every bullshit thing racists have said to me in one spot, so that maybe the right people will read it here. Also, so that maybe I can just cut and paste next time instead of wasting my damn time.
“Black people sold each other into slavery.”
This is probably the most annoying response, because whenever this is said, you can tell that the Master Debater thinks they’ve served up some sort of “gotcha.”
I don’t know what they expect. Maybe for me to sit there and be like “Oh, well in that case I guess we’re all equally at fault for the 200 years of white slave owners purchasing actual human beings, splitting them up from their families, and subsequently working to ensure that the laws would continue to treat those human beings as little more than farm animals. You have humbled me, Sir.”
In reality, my response is always: “AND?” Because really, what the hell does that have to do with the way the white men and women of the time chose to exercise their free will? Sellers of slaves don’t have to sell, but the buyers of slaves in no way have to buy.
For example, let’s talk about sex trafficking. Did you know that Thailand is one of the countries in the world where sex trafficking is most perpetrated? Those most vulnerable to being trafficked are young women, girls, and those who are LGBTQIA+. Guess what else: most of those trafficked are Thai nationals. While that is tragic and horrible and disgusting, you know who most people tend to find even more disgusting? The fuckers who make sex tourism trips that help contribute to Thailand’s $12 BILLION A YEAR trafficking industry. No demand would mean no supply. The businessmen are assholes, but they continue to exist because of the trash that keeps them in business.
So I don’t give a shit who sold what; chatel slavery didn’t last for two centuries because Black millionaires were over here purchasing them directly.
Oh, and at least one of those Black people purchasing slaves? One of the most popular? Was most likely purchasing them in in order to free them, and purchasing family in order to reunite with them. So this is a stupid argument. The end.
“Why should I care? My family didn’t own slaves.”
So your family was a bunch of plump peasant farmers who never purchased slaves. Let me give you three points here that explain why your response means exactly jack-shit in the scheme of things:
- Owning slaves was only part of the problem. Another part was the attitudes and treatments of Black people that were considered socially acceptable. Your great-great-great grandma may not have owned a slave, but she still most likely got pissed if one looked her in the eye as she passed them on the road. Or expected them to take her coat if she visited one of her friends who did own slaves. Or tossed the “n” word around casually when one tried to get in line in front of her at the general store. Or wished she did have slaves, because it was considered a status symbol and a show of wealth. Social norms at the time were still social norms, and your family was probably still racist, because that was what it was at the time.
- The United States, especially, built that shit into its foundation, and just stacked more onto it. Laws continued throughout the years –often passed by people who really didn’t like that their farm implements couldn’t be beaten and forced to stick around to work anymore– to favor white, Christian men. And eventually, so did stock in stores, and real estate, and 9 million other things. Your family not owning slaves doesn’t change the fact that you’re surrounded by societal cues telling you that white lives are more valuable than non-white ones. So I mean….stop it.
- Say that your plump peasant great-great-great grandparents didn’t own slaves because they so happened to be abolitionists, people ahead of their time. That doesn’t say shit about your personal standards. My grandmother used to love eating oatmeal with water, but if my oats don’t have milk in them, I won’t eat them. So your ancestors having not taking part in (or even being against) the racial travesties at the time doesn’t absolve you from having to care about the ones in your face at this present moment.
“Uuuum…it was the Republicans who freed the slaves.”
Again…AND? So some white dudes who identified with one political ideology (one that switched labels and ideologies, like, 100 years ago by the way) released human beings who many of both ideologies had enslaved in the first place, and that means…like…what? That now we should be voting for some white dudes who have nothing to do with the first white dudes? That now, we’re not allowed to call out your favorite football team –I mean, political group–when they seem way too interested in racist policies and using the Constitution to take rights away instead of giving them? This doesn’t track. So I shouldn’t be asking you to care about the problems of non-white people, especially Black people, because “it happened a long time ago and has nothing to do with [me],” but I’m supposed to align myself with some old white dudes who happen to share party affiliations with some dudes who did something long time ago that has nothing to do with them. Which is it? Am I taking ancestry into account here or not? Pick a fucking lane.
Also, the slaves were released as political punishment to the south for cessesion, not because Abraham Lincoln liked using cocoa butter on his ankles. He actually thought that Black people were to live separately from white people.
ALSO, Black lives are used as political pawns by literally everyone today, so everyone sucks. But the ones who especially suck are the ones who respond to a Black person’s disgust with “well, the party of white guys I like decided to let you live here without chains after we all kinda brought you here against your will so you, like, owe us.”
“I have three Black neices/a Black boyfriend/a Black hamster.”
No one gives a shit. No one is impressed. You could love rap music, have a favorite Black football player, and have sex dreams about Edris Elba, but if the only way you’re able to see a non-white person as human is if they’re giving you something (love, sex, entertainment) in return, that doesn’t mean a thing. I know people who pull this shit with people in the LGBTQIA+ community, too. People who insist that they adore their gay best friend, but who also for some reason think this clears them to use anti-gay slurs and call the way they love a “sin.”
You’re not more tolerant, or more accepting; you’ve just decided to make an exception because you get something out of it.
And hey…speaking of slurs…
“Oh, Okay. So you call me Opie/Cletus/The Beav/Casper the Friendly Ghost. So you’re using slurs to fight racism with racism?”
No, Scooter. Just…no.
Here’s the thing, White Claw: a “slur” has to hold history. You can’t use the “n” word, because it was used for hundreds of years to depersonalize one whole race of people, and then it was used AGAIN to stop that same race of people from being able to do things human beings should be allowed to do. The fact, Cool Whip, is that I can call you names all day long, but they’re only rude; they’re not “racist,” and they’re not “slurs.” In order for them to be racist, there would have to be some sort of suggestion that you’re less than me for your skin color, and nothing about calling you, One Who Puts Raisins in Potato Salad, holds that kind of historical or social weight.
Did that bother you? Ok, I’ll try calling you something else.
The other thing, you infected bunion, is that racism against Black, Native, and Asian people, sexism, and inequality against LGBTQIA+ is so much more than just calling someone a nasty name. Martin Luther King wasn’t marching to get people to just stop saying mean words to each other. You, you waste of perfectly good sperm, aren’t being discriminated against. You, you walking equivalent of that last piece of shit that just won’t drop out of my asshole no matter how hard I squeeze, are experiencing no racism. You only say this because you’re a particularly stubborn testicular torsion, and you think that if you can claim that someone is being “racist” towards you, you’ll somehow be able to neutralize the accounts of systemic racism and pain that others go through.
Racism isn’t just a bunch of hurt feelings, you evolutionary disaster, you stubborn bout of halitosis, you inoperable brain tumor. People of color aren’t just complaining about the history of being called nasty names, and it’s fucking insulting and diminishing for you to try to reduce a very serious historical problem to just that.
You shit-stained guest bathroom hand towel.
I could keep going on forever, so I’m only doing one more for now:
“Black people are the most protected in the United States. Not like I can get free college or financial assistance. They’re so spoiled and always trying to act like victims.”
This is what you sound like:
“People in wheelchairs are such whiners. Like, sure they weren’t guaranteed to be able to access places up until 19-fucking 90 despite actually gaining the Rehabilitation Act seventeen years earlier, and sure they were consistently still passed up for jobs and treated regularly like second-class citizens and left to lose their homes and die on the streets, but like…now they have ramps and special bathrooms and they get to board planes first. And they get paid disability? No one is passing me any checks even though I’m clearly an able-bodied human being who has always been able to just walk into buildings, use any toilet I want, and work for a living. So I mean…obviously they’re the privileged ones. Where’s my parking spot right in front of the store?!”
And that’s what I have this time. I’m realizing I’ll, sadly, have more.
And to those who would never say these things, I thank you. May you outnumber the ones above overwhelmingly one day.
And if you’re one of those who actually says this shit, I say as respectfully as I can that I hope you fall into a ditch full of menstruating killer bees.
The end. For now.
