I posted a picture celebrating ‘Black Girl Magic’ on MY Instagram page and someone (a white person) accused me of being racist because I refused to use MY platform to celebrate & support ‘white girl magic’ equally. This person went on to say that proof of my racism lies in the “fact” that I own & operate two businesses, but still feel the need to uplift & promote Black women, but not white women. I considered educating this person on the significance of ME promoting & uplifting Black women and People of Color on MY platform. However, instead, I decided that it is not my responsibility to use MY platform to explain why I love myself. I decided that it is not my responsibility to use MY platform to explain why I choose to support those who look like me and therefore who suffer like me in this country and across the world for no other reason than the way we look. That person chose to take my promotion of self-love as an opportunity to tear me down. And then feigned a lack of understanding of why I couldn’t be bothered to step away from my self-love in the face of such vitriol to uplift my people’s oppressors.
If you, white people or anyone, see someone loving themselves and those like them & it triggers you to the point that you have to take time out of your schedule to tear them down, then you need some self-reflection. Ask yourself why it bothers you so much to see someone else loving themselves. If you have not attacked someone marching for AIDS awareness to stress that Cancer matters also, then please do not come for Black people or other People of Color about white lives. I can share information, but not explanations. It is not my responsibility to help you unlearn all the misinformation about Black people’s condition in this country or to provide you with reasons why you need to unlearn that misinformation, outside of informing you that it is misinformation. I am not your personal educator. But if I were, I would be remiss if I did more than provide you with information and then allow you to engage in your own critical thinking and problem solving. Not engaging in self-observation, independent thinking, critical thinking, and problem solving is what keeps us all stagnant in this racist culture we’ve bred and have allowed to flourish.
I see a lot of “Pro-Black is not Anti-White” & “Black Lives Matter too” type posts. I am neither for them nor against them. I am not one of those kinds of persons. I am an unapologetic and unmitigated Pro-Black person. I have absolutely no desire to engage with people who need it explained that Pro-Black does not mean Anti-White or anti-anything else. I have never heard of, read about, seen, or otherwise experienced a situation where someone who promoted Cancer research was approached and verbally attacked for not also promoting AIDS research. When we say police kill Blacks at a higher proportional rate than whites, someone always comes out the box to speak out the side of their necks about how many white people police have killed. Never mind the obvious problem with that “argument.” But, not in any capacity that I’ve ever been aware of has someone given a statistic for the death toll of cancer sufferers & been bombarded with the statistics for COVID deaths in an attempt to minimize Cancer deaths. So, no! Absolutely not will I engage in mitigating my Pro-Blackness for white comfort. It has been argued that Pro-Black is so threatening to some because Pro-White is threatening to People of Color. Maybe. Maybe not. If you are not threatened by and confrontational towards football fans who have not spoken up about baseball games, or Toyota drivers who have not promoted Hondas, or Nike purchasers who do not promote Adidas then DO NOT bring your vitriol to those of us who revel in our Pro-Blackness.