Estimated reading time: 10 minute(s)
I’ve notice that a lot of white people in particular like to point to that one token black friend, or a black spouse in order to dismiss the fact that they can be racist.
A token black person, or any person of color really, is not good enough proof that you don’t have racial prejudices towards us, or that you actually have a genuine concern about issues we face.
We often like to think that if we have “diverse groups of friends” that eliminates racism. We would like to think that inviting white people to our cookouts and having biracial children means that racism doesn’t exist anymore.
By Nzinga Muhammad
We have to get out of this idea that racism is a two dimensional construct with limiting factors and an overnight solution. Racism comes in many forms, with the root of course being white supremacy. Just because you have a few black associates, that doesn’t mean you have solved the Rubik’s cube of racism. That’s not how it works.
I was watching Law & Order the other day (my new favorite show I swear), and this white woman had killed a black teenager my age because she “feared for her life.” She claimed he was going to rape her (when he wasn’t) and justified killing him. This woman was a chef and successful businesswoman but also had a history of being racist. She claimed she was not racist because of her one gay Chinese employee. Although she referred to her black employees as “field hands”, and treated them unfairly. But it was, according to her, a “joke”.
Oppressive jokes turn violent. She went from “jokes” that she believed, to actually killing a black person. Yes she had black employees, she even had black friends, but that was irrelevant. How do you treat them? Do you care about their lives? What are your views on black people? Are your friends “unlike other black people” ?
I know some white people with black spouses, but cringe at the words “Black Lives Matter”. I know biracial people who are often mistreated by their white family members for even having blackness in them. It’s sad and unfortunate, but you cannot tell me that having mixed babies is the cure to racism. A lot of white people don’t necessarily care about black lives, they just want black bodies to sleep with.
Like I said on my Tumblr post a while ago: There is a difference between being pro black lives and pro black sperm. It is very possible to not be for the liberation of black people, while simultaneously having a black person as a partner.
Not to be vulgar…there was a hashtag created by white girls on Twitter that said #BlackD**kMatters and they loved it. Unfortunately there were some black men who went along with it, but why was the value of a black man limited to his ability in bed, and not his life as a human being? Why was it so hard for the white girls to say Black Lives Matter that they had to change it? Black men for them did not matter as people, but simply as sex objects.
There was a white girl who turned a picture of the dead body of Alton Sterling into a joke, meanwhile she has a black boyfriend.
There are prom proposals posted online of white boys giving black girls koolaid packets and/or KFC as a way to ask them to prom.
If you think for one second that fetishizing black people, or using stereotypes as a friendly offering is at all flattering, then you are nothing more than a disgusting racist.
Stop pointing to your children or family members to say “Well I’m not racist!” Remember that slave masters also had biracial children, so I really don’t care about mixed babies being good enough evidence that you aren’t racist.
(Follow Nzinga Muhammad on Twitter @QueenNzinga13)
