Why Do Y'all Hate Black Women? (This Isn't Rhetorical)

This post is inspired by a lot of things...so I'll just name one.

I'm so intrigued by the fact that in order for systems like sexism and racism to succeed and grow, there has to be some level of cooperation by some level of the marginalized group in the system. Basically, for sexism to be as historically prevalent as it's been, men cannot have been the only parties doing the oppressing. Women have and are feeding into and participating in their own oppression by participating in systems and institutions that were created to work against them. (Obviously this is a controversial and difficult topic. Trust me, I'm sweating while typing it.) I could go into more detail and share examples, but since this post is just inspired by this reality and not fully about it, I'll cut it off here. Feel free to explore it in your own posts or in the comments, though!

So, I guess I'll call this topic "In-Group Discrimination."

I want to use this post to explore the complexities of ism's, and how they're even and often powerful enough to turn marginalized communities against each other, in both small and big ways. Let me start by telling you a little bit about my friends.

For most of my college life, my primary friend group has been made up of eight people. I don't want to incriminate them by using their names, but I'm also stressed about choosing fake names. So, I'm going to assign them each a letter...which also seems really impersonal and super identity-snatching, so just know that I love them all very much and only have a few limited options here. Okay, so back to the point. My friend group is composed of three black men (let's call them A, B, and C), two black women (D and E), two white women (F and G), and me, the mixed one (not gonna refer to myself as a letter because 1. you already know me and 2. I've got nothin' to hide).

This is more of an in-group issue that deals with race, but there's also a very clear male vs. female dynamic to it, so I thought it would be fair game to post about. Here we go...

Let me preface this by saying that because I'm mixed (my mom's white and my dad's black), people often feel like they have to throw me into one category or the other, and they never know which one to choose. I mean, no one's ever told me that to my face, but I can feel it, you know? You can tell when you don't fit into the boxes formed in someone's head. Anyway, this has allowed me to be privy to many (TOO MANY) conversations that I wouldn't have otherwise. People will be openly racist in front of me because I'm "not actually black," and I can't tell you how many times my black friends have smiled in solidarity when my white friends haven't recognized a song they played as they say, "every black kid listened to this song" and I DID NOT KNOW THE SONG. Basically, I've been able to listen to awful, uncomfortable conversations about black and white people alike because I'm not really seen as either.

One thing in particular that really gets to me is when black men think it's cool or funny or even acceptable in any way to degrade black women, specifically their appearance. Let me insert a tweet that recently had me very fired up:

Here's the video and article link if the one I embedded doesn't work properly because you MUST watch it: https://thegrio.com/2020/01/03/singer-ari-lennox-claps-back-at-twitter-troll-comparing-her-and-teyana-taylor-to-rottweilers/

There's something really disturbing about the way some black men choose to speak to and about black women. It's not just a "guy thing." Just as Ari Lennox stated in her video, there's something unusual and unique (in a bad way) about the way discrimination against women works in the black community.

I wanted to bring up Ari's story because it could not be more relevant to the conversations I have heard and experienced within my friend group. At my age, I've kind of grown to accept that most guys are probably going to talk about women, specifically the female body, a lot. As long as they're not being demeaning or creepy, I usually just stay quiet or have a completely different conversation with the gals while they talk about whatever it is guys talk about. But sometimes, these conversations have gotten really sketchy really fast. If you ask them, I'm not sure if they'd claim this, but from the way they speak about women, it's become obvious to me that A and B have a clear racial preference when it comes to women they're willing to date (their hook-up preferences give a little more leeway, which is interesting...maybe I'll write a post about that one day). Basically, they like white women. 

Now, I'm not here to say that's innately wrong or shame anyone for their preferences, but I want us to look at this situation with our minds opened (I'm going to look at it with fresh eyes too) and see if there are things about it that seem like red flags, that make us uncomfortable, or that just seem straight up wrong, and I want us to think about why.

One of the first reasons I started seeing my guy friends' comments as sketchy is a pretty big one: they only said these type of things when D and E (the two black women) weren't around. A would make comments like, "white girls can get it any day, but a black girl...nah I gotta get to know you first." And B and C laughed, and I kinda smiled uncomfortably, trying to figure out what he meant by that, if he meant what I thought he meant, and why he would ever say or even think that. I'm sure there were probably other similar comments before this, but this is the one I remember the most because I feel like this was the night that the lightbulb kind of went off for me. I couldn't unsee or unhear it.

I started noticing other things after that. C would mention a girl he'd talked to about homework or something completely unrelated, and A would immediately jump to, "Who? What's her Instagram?" This is not an exaggeration--I could almost always tell whether the girl was black or not by the way he reacted to her Instagram. If she was black, he would typically look at the screen for a few seconds, maybe even give it a quick scroll, then hand the phone back. If she wasn't, he was up IN that phone. Looking at individual pictures, scrolling for what felt like days, making comments about her outfits or body, etc. The reactions weren't even close to similar. Occasionally I would be wrong, or he would spend a few extra seconds on the Insta page of someone who was brown-skinned with a lighter complexion, but even that was pretty rare.

The comments never got worse per say, but they definitely got more frequent. A and B started saying things like, "Did you see her fit? Only a white girl could pull that off," or "If it ain't white it ain't right," and it even got to the point where these things were being said in front of D and E. E was always quick to chime in immediately with an "are you SERIOUS?" (with a few other choice words I've omitted), but the conversations always ended in laughs, even though I know from conversations I had with D and E after the fact that they didn't find it funny.

I started noticing even smaller things. The guys were quick to tell F and G (the white women) that they looked nice or they liked their outfit, but they hardly ever complimented D and E. If they did, it was always on their shoe game. They hardly ever complimented their outfits, hair, etc. (I do want to shoutout C, though. He is a compliment KING and threw out compliments pretty equally and regularly. Love that guy.) It's not like the compliment comparison was even close, either. It was noticeably skewed towards F and G. I called this a "small thing," meaning it's something that would typically go unnoticed, but it had a huge impact on the dynamic of our friend group. F and G didn't notice the disparity, but D and E definitely did, and things like that (and other events that occurred) have actually caused riffs in our group and caused certain people to not be as close as they were at the start of college. This stuff seems harmless, but it's a bigger deal than a lot of people realize. I've seen the effects it's had on people's lives.

I love my friends. I don't agree with everything they think or do, and I have definitely got into arguments about things like this with them...but they're family. And what do you do when family hurts you? What do you do when the people who are supposed to have your back, the ones who are supposed to protect you, say and do things that rock the very core of who you are?

Again, like I've said on every other post, I don't have the answer to that. It's hard, and I truly do not understand the way that so many black men treat black women. (I actually swore off white men when my ex told me with a straight face that white, middle class men have it the worst in America *pardon me as I vomit* but then I've gotten my feelings equally hurt by insensitive black men, too. So, is the answer just swearing of...men?) I used to think that if I wrote about injustice and talked about it every chance I got, then I would finally get it and be able to fix it. What I've found instead is that the more I write, the more questions I have. I think I'm okay with that. As long as there is an active, honest conversation, there's progress.