Something a lot of white folk don't realize happens to Black people a lot:
When there is a competition between a Black person and a white person for a coveted prize, if the white person wins, they're celebrated. If the Black person wins... they're asked to share the prize with the white person that came in second place.😮
This happens to Black women more often than Black men.
When LSU beat Iowa for the national championship, Jill Biden invited Iowa to the White House anyway, to share LSU's prize. It was only because Angel Reese said "Oh hell no, then I'm not even going to the White House. Y'all can keep it." That the White House walked it back.
Do you know how much courage it takes to stand up to the First Lady of the United States of America? Do you know how much racist abuse Angel Reese has faced every day since then, as a result of her standing up for herself?
@mekkaokereke
Terrible move on Jill's part. The worst part of it, to me, is I don't believe it was a conscious thought about color. Jill should be looking at herself and going holy crap! Did I really do that? As should all white folks who believe they don't have built-in racism. I have second- guessed myself many times thinking "crap! I know how that must have looked and I did not mean it that way at all - or did I?"
@mekkaokereke That was a memorably terrible mistake. Humiliating for LSU, and infantilizing for Iowa. (The Iowa team wanted nothing to do with it.)
And we're seeing it, again, because Clark got the Great White Hope mantle put on her shoulders, again. The way some people talked about the championship, she was the only exceptionally talented player on the floor. That's just bullshit.
If Iowa had won, there is no way that Jill Biden would have invited LSU to the White House as well. The sharing and the graciousness only goes in one direction.
I want you to know that Black girls feel the message of "You weren't supposed to win! We wanted the other girl to win! We resent you for winning!"
She sued to have this corrected, and lost. Because even though the court found that she should have been the sole valedictorian, she did not prove that the "error" happened because she was Black. Therefore a federal civil rights violation was not committed.🤷🏿♂️
@mekkaokereke whats worse about this is I read the first paragraphs and was expecting to see an archive report from the high school newspaper in 1977 and a picture of the young woman on Kodachrome film, not a modern article from VICE in 2017 - its like nothing was learned from the civil rights struggles of 1960s or if anything there has been a constant backlash..
If a Black person achieves something and receives an award, and your first instinct is to say, "They should share it!" Think deeply about why you are saying and feeling that.
If the Black person says, "No, I don't want to share it." Will your opinion of them change? Will you think they are being selfish? If so, then was your request really a request?
But for the sake of your sanity DO NOT read any of the comments beneath it. Just a cesspool of bile and hate. Youtube being the Youtube you've all been warned about.
Ugh. I saw and remembered why YouTube comments under non-niche interest videos are generally a swamp.
I wonder how bot-heavy those sections are. So many comments are just derivative of each other, not only in content but in language. Or maybe they’re organic bullies copying each other. Either way, they're just awful.
@mekkaokereke when I was a kid, I took part in an inter-school book quiz thing. We reached the finals and won and the prize was to choose a book of our own from a tableful of books.
For some reason, the organisers decided that actually, all of us would get to choose a free book, and then gave first choice to the fucking losers.
Now we were all (very) white. I don't know a single black person at the time.
But, oh boy does that experience make me side with Angel Reese all the way.
@mekkaokereke In which I learn US schools are still segregated. "The lawsuit alleges that the Cleveland School District, Craddock, and Dr. Thigpen were "upset by [the] recent desegregation order." "
Add comment