The last few days have been interesting, to say the least. Confused, reeling, frazzled, hopeful, I have been going through all those feelings. Why, I am wondering, am I feeling so much from events that happening at the periphery of my life?
And then I realized that for the first time really, I had the feeling I could open up about racism, about how racism has shaped my life. I feel like for the first time, I can share with everyone. Racism is deeply intimate experience, it touches your sense of self, of worth, of value, of acceptance, of belonging. It makes you vulnerable and those past few days, I could admit even to myself how bad I have been hurt.
So for the first time I feel I can share that vulnerable part of me, with you. I can show a bit of what is under the bravado and the flamboyant persona (get ready, there is quite a lot to unpack lol). And I am not the only one. Other friends have shared the same sentiment. We’ve been going through so many questions the past few days, wondering why now? So many people dead, so many voices unheard, what made it that we are being noticed now?
Also, we feel vindicated. Because black women from my generation in fact, have stopped trying to be heard. I am thinking about Clarisse Libene who is providing therapy to black women only and teaching us about self-love, Marie Da Silva who is providing coaching for black women on work place survival, Dani, book therapist only working with black women, Therapies pour Afro-descendantes, who is providing us with mental health information and resources, and many many others who created magazines, beauty products, podcasts, tv channels and opened spaces for black women only. Because we knew. We knew that what we needed would not be provided by our white counterparts. Tired of not seeing ourselves being represented in mainstream (read white- centered) media and spaces, we’ve created support networks, we’ve written book, created information and media that would solely focus on our needs and lives.
And I also realized that my vulnerability, my rage, that part of me that is often tired and exhausted and frankly feel like giving up sometimes or just screaming, I could only give it to black women. And I also realized that I developed a persona, an image of me that I could share a part of me, the fun , flamboyant, courageous, smart one. But my vulnerability, my questions, what I consider my failures, I have never felt safe trusting a white person with that ( with the exception of my husband).
So, this is the first and last time I am going to try to explain. I am going to try to explain, because as my friend, white or black, you should have all of me, not just part of me.
In the next four to five days, I am going to open up about my wounds, about how or why I have been affected. I am going to let my self be vulnerable. I am going to talk about my trauma, and how they relate to your privilege as a white person. I want you to KNOW, racism is not just a concept, something far away. Racism hurts, it kills, it’s real for people like me.
In exchange of me laying it out here, I will ask you one thing. In a few days, once you are done reading about me and my life, be actively anti-racist. Not non racist, but anti-racist. Get to work. You don’t get to know me, and sit quietly while I am hurting. If you don’t educate yourself, if you don’t vote, if you don’t do the hard work that is necessary to dismantle that system, quietly leave this space please.
I am not saying that to shock anyone, I am just saying I am done giving passes to people who should know better especially after I have shared.
That said, let me start with the first topic.
1. The privilege of individuality:
Being an individual is a privilege only white people are afforded, and it is often used as a weapon against minorities. When you talk about racism and colonialism, the white person will tell you “yes, but I AM NOT the one who colonized your country”, “I AM NOT the one who acted that way”. Using their individuality allows them to distance themselves from the wrongdoing that as a collective, they have inflicted on others.
I cannot begin to tell you for example about the stress incurred by black and brown people around the world every time there is a terrorist attack in a western country. Because we know, we know we are not seen as individuals so the actions of a few persons are going to be blamed on the collective. When a black or brown person commits a crime in US or in Europe, whole countries are banned, put in red zones, and millions of individuals are considered dangerous for humanity as whole. When a white person commits a terrorist attack, he is an individual. Who would think about banning Canadians or American from a country because of one crazy person? No one. When a Cameroonian commits a crime in Europe, you better believe I am going to be searched twice as often when I cross borders in the next few months.
That is the reason many of us are pushed by our parents at a young age, and by ourselves later, to become the model minority. Study hard, work hard, keep your head down and don’t get noticed unless it’s for your excellence. Excellence has become what we need to reach. Always, for everything. Failure is not an option, because my failure is the failure of my community. White people are not upheld to the same standards.
Just look at the Obama presidency. As a collective of black and brown people, we held our breath for eight years so that at least no scandal touches his presidency, and see how as a collective until today, we are so proud of him. We are not proud because he had the best policies, certainly not. But from a moral standpoint, he had been an almost perfect president. I think we felt that a whole community would be judged by the way he held himself. And I think he knew that too. He was carrying with him his African and his American ancestry, and he did it with a lot of class. See ? model minority. The one we thrive to be, non-threatening, so that maybe us too, we could get somewhere. There is a joke that sometimes circulates among POC, saying “Imagine if B. Obama had behaved like the Orange man while he was president. We would not have been able to walk proudly on these internet streets.” Yes indeed, we think white people were expecting him to act all “ghetto” and to get into all kinds of troubles. That would have reinforced their prejudices about the monolithic collective we call Black people, regardless of their individualities.
The model minority is smart, has multiple diplomas, speak eloquently, is straightening her hair, all of those things that white people find non-threatening, because they do not correspond to the idea they have from the minorities in general: living in peripheries, having children while being in school, having no father figure, and so on and so forth. For Africans, they imagine we come from poverty-stricken households, walked barefoot to go to school, and made it where we are just because we were smart.
That’s where questions or remarks such as “you are smart -for a black woman”, or “you speak so eloquently- for a black woman” come from.
I know black doctors and lawyers in Europe, who would tell you that at the end of the day, being a model minority doesn’t relieve them from the stress of being a POC, of being racially profiled, unjustly arrested, etc. They still belong to the collective known as POC, with the prejudices that go with it.
So yeah, that’s the privilege of being an individual, only for white people. What is it going to take, for POC to be seen as humans, as individuals ?