. . . but what? The truth makes you uncomfortable? Facts don’t matter? Or is it because you’re ‘Black’ before anything else? Exactly what is the gross infraction of looking at a matter and your opinion about it is the same as a white person’s? Or, how is your view of it acceptable but that white person’s critique that is in line with your view is not? These questions point directly at a topic discussed heavily in the community (African American, Black, People of Color, BIPOC, or FBA), that topic being the growingly conspicuous inability to become a self-sustaining community of high achievement and reputation that is not dependent on material outside contribution.
I have decided that what is holding back the evolution and and growth of black peoples, or African Americans, or FBAs (foundational black Americans), or deeper still ADOS (American Descendant of Slaves) is the fear of being IN harmony with our actual or perceived former oppressors. This aversion to being in agreement or in concert or culturally similar to ‘white folk’ and mainstream American culture causes a conflict within us that disables any and all opportunities to identify and fix internal problems. For that matter, if a non-white person, or entity, or even a hypothesis suggests that the most challenging issues Black America faces are generated within Black America, that inference is rejected with extreme prejudice.
The statement titling this essay is not from my lips but from the lips of Blacks who are in a conundrum.
I do not share participation in this conundrum, I found my freedom, preferring not to be part of a comfortable lie. I watch the professing of blackness in the face of publicly observable and worsening stupid shit. Rallying to the defense of self-destructive anti-social behavior is a choice many have made but it is not mine.
https://hiphopwired.com/playlist/jamaican-cottage-owner-blasts-black-americans-reactions/
Honestly, criticizing the ratchetness will draw a daunting gauntlet that many people regardless of race, color, creed, or orientation would retreat from. The Jamaican woman above was roasted in the comments by Blacks who blame everyone else for their horrible public behavior.
Maybe they will. Maybe they don’t. I don’t really care, what really matters to me is that when I see a new black neighbor I’m happy but then concerned. Which folk am I getting? Industrious, community oriented, respectful? Or the black person in a du-rag, fitted cap or dreadlocks with bonnet topped womenfolk who wants to know, “What’s it like being here with these, white folks/caucasians/crackers?” I want nothing to do with group two; if that’s your concern and the verbiage you use, we probably won’t get along.
I have NEVER uttered the title phrase. Contrarily, the latest employment of this phrase I heard was a relative. This relative who considers themself pro-Black. But like many forward thinking, uplifting, growth oriented Black folk, this family member professes indignation at white folk—so much so that they left their own ‘kind’ to move into the white community. Isn’t that much like those Black Lives Matter lesbians who took ya’lls money and bought a mansion in a white neighborhood, just like the many Black men and some Black Women who TALK Black but show a family picture with a non-black wife or husband, and kind of like the black men who tell tales of Black ingenuity while living in homes or buildings designed and built by no one Black, driving German and Japanese cars and talking on cell phones supported by the evil white man’s satellites.
See, pro-black progressives don’t want to live amongst the nuckas (insert offensive N word) they have unending sympathy for; they move to the community of their alleged OPPRESSORS. They then demand that the rest of society should accept the people that they themselves do not want as neighbors. For this alone I think the Black progressive is the most full of shit and fake of all people in human history.
Black revolutionaries lecture the world about acceptance and are the least accepting. The people they don’t want as their neighbors, the rest of us must accept as ours. And when the whites who accept the black revolutionaries as neighbors aren’t perfect, they are rewarded with arrogant attitude if not outright disdain.
Prove me wrong Black progressive—move to a neighborhood of the ‘disadvantaged’ and help them come up. Start a business there and hire them. Let one of their sons date your daughter, or one of your sons date their daughter, look the other way when they blast that vulgar music they love; shut your ears as they cannot complete a sentence without using the ‘N’ word that we swear is insulting but populates ALL of Black entertainment.
Or, Mr Pro-Black Revolutionary Black Panther…”Kangz” as you address one another, marry and produce children with a black woman. Until you do that, you’re a fucking liar.
My relative uttered the title phrase above as they became concerned about the possibility of a tabled public transportation expansion opening their very nice neighborhood.
A neighborhood they chose filled with white people they distrust, but are concerned about an influx of those they consider to be ‘our people’. They like their fine neighborhood, they don’t wan’t the riff raff, but conceding that problem Negroes may infiltrate their harmony ALSO means agreeing with white folks. AND oooohweee, black people would rather die by gasoline immolation than admit whites might be right about something. This family member will not speak ill of the people he knows will ruin his neighborhood for fear of “…sounding like racist white people and hating my own.” It was amazing to see him walk the tightrope between “these folks is racists”—but– “I don’t want them Negroes here either.”
“I Don’t Want To Sound Like White People, But . . .”
So which is it?
