I was once asked if I was adopted by white people because the white Australian asking me this, couldn’t understand why I was so eloquent and well mannered…. Not my words – her words – Like, she said that to me; that really happened!!!! The crazy thing is that I wasn’t even offended – I’m even ashamed to say that I may have even felt slightly complemented; she thought I was eloquent and well mannered; how lovely….
I excused her, and chose to assume that she hadn’t been exposed to many black people… blah blah blah…. And this is just one encounter amongst many others, all carrying the same message… Some statements are a little more subtle and I hear them so often that they have become normal… I can’t tell you how many times people will say to me… ‘I DON’T SEE YOU AS BLACK’ then they proceed to say something racist about black people to me… like, are you really looking at my chocolate skin and not seeing a black person? Really?… Not only are we used to hearing such statements, we are okay with them, or worse, we sometimes consider them compliments….
But what that statement is really saying is this: ‘My mind cannot adjust to the thought of a black person being educated, eloquent or well mannered, and since you are all those things, I will no longer classify you in the category of the inferior black race; you have graduated; in my eyes, you’re so great you might as well be white…’ – this was even hard to type…. Sigh….
I’m no longer okay with accommodating this kind of ignorance – I’m really not…
‘We are only made to feel inferior when we give our consent.’- Eleanor Roosevelt
When I first moved to Australia, I met a black Zimbabwean girl who offered to help me get a job in nursing… She knew people who knew people and could almost guarantee that I would have a job by the end of the week. I told her that nursing wasn’t something I thought I would enjoy and or even be good at, and that I would consider doing retail instead. She laughed so hard and told me that I was ‘living in a fantasy world’ and that ‘black people would never be able to get jobs like that in Australia.’
Ummm, I’m sorry, what? You don’t think that black people… Wait, not black people – you don’t think that YOU (a beautiful, well spoken young lady with a bachelor degree) are good enough to help people buy clothes and give an opinion on which color would suite them BECAUSE YOU’RE BLACK????? I’m by no means knocking retail – I absolutely love retail – and am probably one of the few people who proudly consider it a real career –…. But seriously, Really???!!!!
I walked away from that conversation, frustrated… Frustrated that this girl would limit me, herself and an entire race because of the color of our skin!!! Where does this mindset come from? I’ll tell you… WE ARE MADE TO FEEL INFERIOR BECAUSE WE GIVE OUR CONSENT; and we do so by accommodating, participating in, and even considering as compliments statements like: ‘I don’t see you as being black.’ So I can no longer consent to, accommodate, or in the name of political correctness, leave unchallenged conversations and statements that seek to diminish the worth of an entire race… I can no longer make excuses for racist speech, and pass it off as ignorance or sit back silently and watch another generation of black parents teach their children to strive for whiteness… I know that a lot of things are considered okay because they are said in fun… but I no longer think its okay for any reason, to diminish the worth of someone else; whether in ignorance or for the sake of your amusement.
