We, Black and Brown people, are not and should not be each other’s enemy.
As a cishet Caribbean immigrant who is both Black and considered Brown —depending on where I am at and in front of whom— in the United States, I exist in numerous intersections of privilege and discrimination. I have seen, first-hand, how the system and individuals treat us, and how we treat each other. It ain’t good.
Whatever anybody says to the contrary, though, we’ve inspired, learned, interchanged, and borrowed ideas, rhetoric, tactics, and liberation language from each other —across time, nations, and continents— since we started fighting back against our oppressor. Special shout-out to Haiti. No amount of Americentric hypervisibility at any given moment should be used to erase that in some sick Highlander “there can be only one” battle to the death just so one can be in the toxic graces of liberal and conservative White America for restitution and access to power.
Everybody has the right to bat for their own people, that’s a given, but revisionism can boomerang back to your neck. There are legit culture vultures, for sure. There are plenty of parasitic “people of color” who have straight-up plagiarized and jacked Black thought, for instance, while being anti-Black so they can win the grand prize of white acceptance.
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