This is such an incredibly complex thing to attempt to express, but I’m very wary of black folks (particularly mixed and/or white passing) that have only begun to claim their blackness as a means of being a part of something exclusive. Obviously I don’t mean all, and I know that EVERY black person must go through a journey to claim who they are, but it’s a very particular way it’s done that I’ve seen from some folks that really rubs me the wrong way.
There’s this weird mentality On Here where folks think it’s popular to be oppressed and the more oppressed you are the more access you have to “exclusive” conversations. People want to be able to have an opinion about as many things as possible.
So what we end up with is people scrambling to adopt these black personas that they don’t ride for as hard in their real lives outside of the internet and you have people co-opting experiences they’ve only really “experienced” secondhand through OTHER black people who talk about it online.
You have people who haven’t thus far navigated the world as a black person (because thus far they’ve behaved and other people have thought they weren’t) who are now speaking from the perspective of someone who grew up saturated in black culture bearing the plight of those who grew up feeling its weight, which isn’t always true to their own experiences.
There was another thing I wanted to say about the ramifications of doing those things but I’ll say it later lol.
You can say Amandla and Yara it’s okay.
But seriously I get where you are coming from. I have a niece that is white-passing. But the thing is with her she has a black momma who taught her well. I find in my studies of “wishy washy” black ppl or anti-black black ppl is that the parent that is black is 99% the dad. So everything about “convenient” black ppl rests on which parent is black. We all know what black men think of black women, and it translates to the child. Black women will almost always make sure that the child knows their black roots and the struggles of being black though light skin, exception is Yara’s mom 😑. Black men will celebrate their child’s skin as being light and more beautiful and will place the blackness of some features (lips hair butt) of their child on pedestals example (Kanye and Kevin Hart). They will openly disrespect black women in front of mother and child, but will praise said features. It is rare that a black man will raise a mix child with respect of blackness and knows what their skin color will do for them and how the same skin will hurt other black ppl exception is Zendaya’s Dad 👍🏾🤗.
It’s about parenting, more so than the child themselves though as an adult it is harder to unlearn when you have been praised so much.
i wasn’t talking about any celebs, and yara and amandla did not come to mind at all when i made this post. I was talking about people on tumblr specifically. And I personally don’t agree that they fall into that category, as much as Amandla’s choices in movies irritates me.
I do not understand why folks always love to bring Yara especially into these discussions (and I know you didn’t Bea) when she has never once denied or “just claimed” her blackness. It’s so so irritating to see. She has always spoken about her blackness, her privilege within that because of her father’s heritage and colorism, and so on.
When you see a really good post but there’s some form of guilt tripping to reblog it added on at the end
(ID: A screenshot of Marge from the Simpsons looking dismally at the camera with one arm raised. A caption underneath her reads “It’s true, but I’m not reblogging it.” End ID)
“I did reconnect with my dad. Of course, he’s a reverend and I’m an atheist so we’ve got a long way to go but it’s a start. And, it makes my sister, Ali, happy. She really wants us to be a family again. And, I’m pretty sure she’s using us as a case study for her graduate psych thesis”. -Miles Finer
Just Sha 