In my everyday encounters with White people, people who I have let into my circle, people who I have let get close, I have experienced an incredibly disturbing trend, especially amongst White women. My experiences are invalidated–they do not exist, they are not real, they aren't that bad–because they try to overwrite my stories with their own.
I do not need a twelve-point lecture on how these coloured kids you knew hurt your feelings when you were eight.
I do not need to know that your great-great grandfather experienced prejudice because he was from Poland or Ireland.
I need you to hear me. Colour-blindness will never, ever solve anything. Magical acceptance faeries do not exist. But if you take five minutes to step outside the shell of your selfishness and listen to me, then that will go millions of miles further than your fake empathy (read: attempts at erasure and silencing).
I need you to understand that I am hurt, that I am offended, that I have been wounded. I need you to understand that there are powers set in place by your ancestors (because White people always want to point to slavery, like that's the only thing Black folk are pissed about? But can we talk about some personal accountability here? Can we talk about how your great-grandfather laughed at racist jokes passed around the diner while Black children looked on hungrily through windows pasted with 'WHITES ONLY' signs? Can we talk about the disgusted looks your great-grandmother gave my poor great-grandmother in passing on the street, because all the shops in the area won't hire coloured girls and she can't afford a nice new dress? Can we talk about decades of silence at micro-oppressive behaviour that has accumulated into this shit-storm of modern day racism? Can we talk about White boys dressing themselves in the death-cloth of Black boys whose bodies are laid in earth still fresh? Can we talk about these things?)– continue to uphold white supremacy?
White people wave banners that read 'YOU CAN'T CLAIM OPPRESSION IF IT'S HAPPENED OVER 100 YEARS AGO.'
Do you realise that's only 25% of the time we spent in enslaved? And that there was another hundred-year battle we fought until we were granted basic civil rights?
For me and my sister, specifically, we are only three to four generations removed from slavery. Our great-great grandmother was an enslaved woman. And we are the first generation removed from the Civil Rights era. One. Generation. That's not even a lifetime.
But we're expected to just get over it?
Okay.