Struggling To Be Heard

Sociology student, mother of 5 cats, music lover, food enthusiast, mixed Black girl, natural hair lover, genderfluid, queer, anti-capitalist and prison abolitionist. Ask if you want to know more.

Here is some info about my pronouns.

I'm here to rant, rave, repost pictures and info, dissect little and big things, bitch, moan, laugh, cry. Stuff. I love getting questions. You'll find things on black history, race in America, dissecting white supremacy, the prison industrial complex, some American politics stuff, gender and feminist issues. Pictures of all kinds of beautiful people, food, cats, and you will definitely get randomly bombarded with anime shots. I also post personal posts about my life, my emotions, and relationships, which can include lots of emotions so forewarning.

Home Archive RSS Ask donate

karnythia:

leonineantiheroine:

Sometimes to be a Black person who organises around anti-racism and other -isms with non-black POC means that you have to prove through your labour and through how ‘radical’ you are that you are worthy of being part of the POC group.

Black people are assumed to be radicalised, to have a radical history and to be badarses (not to mention, are apparently not worth caring about as a person)—so when one isn’t ‘as radical’ or radicalised or misspeaks — then a hundred bricks come down. 

This has been my experience and I have interpreted it as happening to other Black folks too. It’s mainly perpetuated by really controlling non-black POC. 

I posted once about my son being biracial & how being black & X is different than other forms of being multiracial especially when (like my son) your black ancestry is visible. He knows who his biological father is & he’s in regular contact with his white cousins. But, just as they refer to him as their black cousin he sees himself as a young black man.

I got a series of increasingly angry comments from someone who ID’d as multiracial (but not black) about me forcing him to deny parts of his identity. I don’t know if she ever quite grasped that my kid owns a mirror & is the same complexion as his brother with two black parents. My politics might be radical, but they are not unrealistic & that interaction taught me a lot about anti-black racism within anti-racist activists.

@leonine: It’s funny (not haha but you know) that sometimes, I’m the one disappointed by black folks and their non-radical politics. I know it’s different than radical circles and being involved and having to prove yourself. No one has to “prove” themselves to me. However, as someone who is pretty radical in her beliefs, I find myself often feeling like people fall super short when I speak on politics. I think this a bit past the point, but I guess as someone who has grown up with class privilege and education my whole life, I find myself needing to check, well myself. And I think even amongst black people organizing on anti-racism or even just discussing it, their are issues to work across that kind of polarize things making it harder to build solidarity. 

@karnythia: I find it ridiculous anyone who is multiracial would say you are forcing any identity on your son when he is clearly constructing his own. Realism is a big part of what even some people allow themselves to believe and it’s understandable, despite radical politics. We know what’s in front of us, we know how to follow patterns, we know our intuition and feelings. Even if we have the highest of hopes and the biggest of schemes, we always need to assess the reality before us. Which it seems a lot of people don’t want black people doing because from our point of view, it tends to be more cynical. Realistic, but more cynical (not always, but often). 

I’m just throwing thoughts out cause your post made me think.