The Undercover Introvert

Yes, Black Folks Can Swim

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I was at a comedy club last week, chatting with a few friends. It wasn’t the best place for conversation, but we were making do, mostly ignoring the blaring audio from the amateur local comedians performing at the front of the room several feet away. Suddenly, a man on stage loudly proclaimed:

BLACK PEOPLE CAN’T SWIM.

My back was to the stage, so I put on my best what the actual fuck expression and turned to see who was behind the mic. It was some hipster looking white guy in his twenties rocking dreads. There were so many problematic attributes coalescing in a single individual, it took a moment for me to properly process the scene. I turned back to my friends, both white, who had momentarily frozen, along with the rest of the mostly white audience. The hipster went on to assure us:

What? This isn’t racist.

Phew. That was a relief to hear, because it had sounded really racist to me until he made it clear that it absolutely wasn’t.

He followed up with this gem:

Has anyone ever seen a black lifeguard?

No one responded.

Exactly! Because black people can’t swim.

Y’all, I honestly considered standing up, rushing the stage, and dropping knowledge about my years on a swim team and the fact that I was a certified SCUBA diver. But, as is usually the case with white folks indulging in casual assed racism masquerading as ‘jokes’, it wasn’t worth it. If I responded that way every time I heard some racist shit, I would never stop fighting, arguing, and jumping up from my seat in outrage.

What’s funny–not so much funny ha ha, as wow that’s fucked up funny–is there’s a nugget of truth hidden deep within the long held stereotype that black people can’t swim, and it’s not because the negro’s bones are just denser than those of white people (see? I have jokes too). What’s the answer to why fewer black folks swim?

Shocker, it’s racism!

Think back to the Jim Crow era south and segregation. We’ve all seen pictures of one water fountain labeled Whites Only and another right next to it labeled Colored Only. If blacks and whites couldn’t even share a fountain, what was the likelihood that they shared a public pool? If you guessed zero, you are correct. Public pools were also labeled Whites Only, but you wouldn’t often find a companion pool nearby marked Colored. That was of the see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya brand of bad luck for black folks, many of whom had no access to aquatic methods of recreation and had to find diversion elsewhere on land.

If you were born and raised in an environment in which you never learned to swim and never really had access to large bodies of water, what do you think the chances are that you would grow up to teach your own kids how to swim? There’s no genetic defect that affects a black person’s ability to tread water. Many were simply kept from learning the skill for generations because of the color of their skin, and it never became part of their daily lives. As with many other things, what appears to be a deficiency among a specific racial group is actually the direct consequence of a culture rife with deep seated racism, and those effects are far reaching. This long persisting stereotype is the legacy of slavery and segregation, which is why it was so amazing when a black woman finally won an Olympic gold medal for swimming despite this legacy, turning that stereotype on its head before a national audience (go, Simone!).

So, yes, white hipster douchebag with dreads, black people can swim, and it’s racist for you of all people to assert otherwise to earn a few nervous laughs. Also, can we quit with the tired stereotype of the Mexican lawn maintenance worker? Yes, y’all, he went there next and spent several painful minutes beating that racist stereotype into the ground.

I’m sure he has a token black or Latino friend, though, so it’s fine, right?

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Racism 101: Tone Policing

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I recently started a series to explain terms and other basic concepts that have rushed into the forefront over the last year of frenzied discussion on hard topics like systemic racism and the pervasiveness of misogynistic ideas in all levels of American society. For those of us who are members of marginalized groups, we are well acquainted with what these terms mean because we live with the effects of them every day, but that’s not good enough. Everyone needs to understand their meaning, because the behavior they describe continually contributes to systems of oppression in this country and it has to stop.

So, what exactly does tone policing mean?

It’s simple, really. Tone policing describes a diversionary tactic used when a person purposely turns away from the message behind her interlocutor’s argument in order to focus solely on the delivery of it.

Still confused? Well, allow me to elaborate…with an example!

White person: Wow, you are surprisingly well spoken!

Person of color: For a black person, you mean? That’s really insensitive and I can’t believe you thought you had the right to say that to me.

WP: Why are you so upset? I just gave you a compliment.

POC: Do you not even realize what you said and how racist it is for white folks to pat black folks on the head for ‘speaking so well’? Seriously, think before you say things to people.

WP: You need to calm down. No one is going to listen to what you have to say if you’re this angry about it. There’s no reason to attack me over nothing. Have you considered the fact that you could be overreacting to this?

I’ve had a similar conversation to the one above multiple times in my life. It’s aggravating, but it’s also classic tone policing at work. By laser focusing on the emotions behind what the person of color is saying, the white person is able to move the conversation away from her own inappropriate conduct and back onto the POC. In this way, the problem ceases to be the racist comment and instead becomes the POC’s reaction to it.

The suggestion that you can’t deliver a razor sharp argument against racism unless you employ a chilly brand of academic detachment from the subject matter is pure bullshit. Being subjected to any form of injustice is infuriating. The last thing I want to hear from someone who has just said or done something completely out of line is how I need to check my emotional response to it. But tone policing works so well as a defense mechanism because it renders a perfectly legitimate complaint irrational, especially when the offending individual maintains his or her own saintly calm. If you can successfully shut another person down based on her anger or frustration, then you don’t ever have to answer for your own racist conduct. And, bonus, by remaining cool as a cucumber, you appear to be in the right to those around you, especially in comparison to the irate person you just insulted with your belittling behavior.

It’s pretty fucked up, right?

Here’s a good rule of thumb: when you are out of line, you don’t get to set the conditions in which a conversation can occur. That’s privilege at play. You need to truly listen to how and where you went wrong, and then do better in future.

Calling out tone policing whenever it’s employed is the only way to rid ourselves of it. I’m committed to doing that, and despite my mostly logical nature, I don’t plan to be nice about it. So, tone policers beware…

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Being an Ally is More Than Just Lip Service

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I wrote a piece a little while ago that laid out the first part of a road map about how best to proceed as a white person who wants to help people of color in their ongoing struggle for racial justice. This is the next part of that road map, and it deals with how to be an ally.

In my talks with the white folks around me, the question I get most often is: what does being an ally even mean? It’s a term that gets thrown around a lot, especially now that we’re talking more and more about race and societal inequity, but it’s also a term that rarely gets pinned down with an actual definition. Allyship is much more than just memorizing MLK’s I Have a Dream speech or spouting lots of lip service about believing in equality for all. It’s intentional action and it never ends as long as the goal is to dismantle systems of oppression.

Easy peasy, right?

In case you’re still confused, I put together a handy dandy list and, as always, there will be examples and comparisons…

Being an ally is less of a noun and more of a verb

In other words, it’s a series of actions and not a state of being that, once achieved, earns you a kind of irremovable brand of street cred. It’s not a get out of being called racially insensitive badge. I guarantee that you will still get called out by those around you. And, really, that’s to be expected, because this is a deeply racist society. Learning how to stop contributing to systemic racism takes constant work. And just like we learned in middle school that you can’t self ID as cool, you can’t call yourself an ally either. Like coolness, allyship is something that gets said about you, not a badge you get to pin on yourself.

Follow the lead of POCs

Just like women lead the feminist movement while men play a supporting role, POCs should lead the fight for racial justice with white folks there to support us, but not usurp the movement. We need y’all, but our voices should be the loudest and our experiences should dictate the direction of the fight. The struggle for gender equality needs to have male allies…but in the back, not out on center stage. Women’s voices and experiences need to take that leading role. This is no different. A movement not led by those who have the most at stake is bloodless and doomed to fail.

Listen more than you talk

This is key and, honestly, great advice to follow in most aspects of daily life. What I’ve noticed about the times I’ve shared my experiences of moving through the world as a black woman is that white folks are very quick to recenter the conversation onto themselves. They really want me to know that they are not racist, that they have black friends, that they would never consciously oppress anyone! This is defensiveness rearing its ugly head, even though what I said probably had nothing to do with my white interlocutor. I could be talking about a situation that occurred years earlier that had nothing to do with them. If a POC is willing to open herself enough to share a vulnerable experience with you, make sure you’re listening to understand what’s being said, not necessarily to respond or rebut. Taking time to internalize what you’ve been told is okay. And if you’ve been called out for something racially insensitive that you’ve said or done, it’s even more critical that you internalize and fully process that information before responding.

Believe POCs when they share their experiences

I’ve had folks argue with me, shout me down, tone police me, and ask for hard proof of experiences that I’ve shared with them. I’m not sure how I’d come up with video of that time someone called me the N word in 1993, or why it’s even necessary for me to prove it in the first place. When this kind of thing happens, I know I’m dealing with a person that I absolutely cannot trust. It’s disappointing because we’re both supposed to be fighting for the same things–you’d be surprised how many white folks I’ve met in so-called progressive circles who routinely do this to POCs–but I don’t continue to waste my emotional energy. It costs you nothing to believe a POC when she speaks or to stop using racially inappropriate language. I moderate a page for a progressive, community based organization and I have had arguments with white folks over their liberal (see what I did there?) use of the N word. It just wasn’t enough to be told that it was insulting to the POCs on the page, many of whom had requested it be removed. I had another situation on that same page with a man who told me that he was deaf, and members of his community took offense at being called hearing impaired because it held a negative connotation. Now, I was raised to believe that was the polite way of describing someone who was deaf. But it cost me absolutely nothing to believe him and then change my behavior accordingly.

When you’re called out, put your defensiveness aside

This is critical. No one likes being called to task, and our natural response is to double down or attack the person calling us out. What I’m asking you to do is take the time to honestly reflect on what you’ve been told instead of letting defensiveness take over. When that defensiveness rises–and it will–wait to respond until it subsides again. Fully process that knee jerk emotional reaction of hurt, guilt, or anger on your own without demanding that a POC do the emotional labor of soothing you. Understand that this is not commentary on your character, but rather on your actions and/or words. Allowing defensiveness, hurt, anger, or guilt to infect your response will derail what could be an excellent opportunity for self-reflection and growth.

Impact trumps intent

Here’s how confrontations usually go down:

Me: wow, what you just said was really racially insensitive and hurtful.

White person: what?! I’m the least racist person in the world! Insulting you wasn’t what I intended at all! You just took it the wrong way.

I’ve been given ‘compliments’ before that are extremely racist. You speak so well (for a black girl). Also, there have been too many offhand comments to count or recall. What did you get your degree in again? African Studies? (actually, it was philosophy…and not African Philosophy, FYI) Sometimes I let these comments slide. Sometimes I don’t. But every time I’ve called someone to task, the usual defense is that the person didn’t intend to insult me, though that was the actual impact of their grossly insensitive statement, so I just need to move on and let it go. But, actually, what matters here is the impact of what you’ve said or done, not your intent. If the (unfortunately common) assumption that any black woman who went to college must have gone on a basketball scholarship and majored in African Studies causes you to be called out, the excuse that you didn’t intend to insult that woman is weak and not an appropriate defense. What matters is that your words were offensive and you need to stop saying them.

There are no rewards for behaving like you should

Because we’re talking about race much more than we used to, I unfortunately get to hear all about a white person’s racist uncle or cousin or some racist bullshit they heard at the store. Y’all, POCs hear this shit literally ALL. THE. TIME. If you hear some racist crap and you take a stand to put a stop to it (as any decent human being should), there is no reason to report back to a POC to let her know what you did. Tell a white friend if you really need to share. But the constant need for back patting and award-issuing is exhausting to black and brown folks. I’ve heard the N word more in the last three months from so-called ‘allies’ than I have in my entire life because they have felt the need to recount every single racist thing they experience during their day. We don’t need to hear it from you. There are no prizes or medals. Sometimes you are just doing a good thing for the sake of doing a good thing. Definitely don’t let racist shit stand unchallenged in your daily life, but POCs don’t need to hear about the racist cashier at the drug store when we’re just there asking you how your weekend went.

POCs aren’t here to educate you

When a POC calls you out for conduct that perpetuates racism and privilege, that doesn’t then mean she owes you a lesson complete with resources and ways to do better. We are tired, y’all. I mean bone tired. For black and brown folks, racism isn’t something they just realized was a problem in this country in the last few months. We have been living with this our entire lives. Sometimes it’s all we can do to point out when you’ve made a misstep into racist territory, and we just don’t have the emotional wherewithal to do the heavy lifting where educating you is concerned. There are literally thousands of resources available online. You can discuss with white friends. You can read books. Have you seen 13th on Netflix? Most POCs have lived through experiences that make it extremely difficult to find the inclination or the patience to constantly educate the white folks around them. It would be a never ending task. I enjoy an engaging discussion more than the average person, but conversations about racism tend to be frustrating and emotionally taxing, and I’m not always up for it.

If the last year and a half has taught us anything, it’s that we’re not nearly as far along in the United States as we’d hoped. But that knowledge is a good thing, because until we see the problem for what it is, there’s no hope of solving it. We need to keep having these difficult discussions, digging deep into uncomfortable territory, and then digging deeper still. At the other side of that discomfort is where the answers lie. I’m sure of it.

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Words Matter

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We’re suddenly talking nonstop about hard subjects like sexism and racism. If the last year and a half has taught us anything, it’s that we’re not nearly as far along as we thought in this country. The same way the #metoo movement was an eye opener for men about the pervasiveness of systemic sexism, seeing white supremacists marching openly in the streets was a wake up call for white America about how deep racism actually runs in this nation. Since Charlottesville, I’ve had many discussions with white folks. On the one hand, they want to know how they can help, but on the other, they are extremely resistant to the idea that they are most likely perpetuating systems of oppression without even knowing it. Change starts with acknowledging how you feed into the problem and then beginning the hard work to minimize that contribution. How? Well, I’m glad you asked. I’ve come up with a bit of a road map, complete with examples and comparisons, because that’s exactly how I roll. This first part of the road map involves phrases to excise out of your vocabulary like the malignant tumors they are. When we change the way we speak, we change the way we think, and that changes the world around us. Here we go.

1. I don’t see color

This sounds great, right? But it’s actually the opposite of great. I’m proud to be black and I’d like you to see me that way. The issue isn’t my color. The issue is the snap judgments you make when you see my color. That’s what needs to stop. And, usually, when someone says they don’t see color, it’s used as a way to shut down a POC who has called someone on some racist shit.

Let’s compare it to sexism, shall we? Imagine a man who said something seriously sexist and when called on it states that he doesn’t see gender. He just sees people, so there’s no way he can be a misogynist! That would never fly. And, fellas, we want you to see us as women. We just don’t want you to subject us to any of your sexist male nonsense.

2. I have a black friend!

If you’re called out for some messed up stuff that you say, resist the urge to hand us your racial resume. I don’t need to know that you have a black coworker, that you went to school with black kids, that you voted for Obama, or that you love MLK.

Bringing it back to sexism, would you accept a man’s excuse that he can’t have said something sexist because he knows women. He’s married to one. He has a daughter and a mother. That actually makes it worse, right? That he knows women and still reinforces the sexism inherent in every aspect of society? He needs to do better, not make B.S. excuses to shield himself from the consequences of his conduct.

Proximity to a marginalized group does not inoculate you from contributing to systems of widespread oppression. If that’s how it worked, there wouldn’t be any sexism or racism in the first place.

3. I’ve struggled my whole life, so I can’t have white privilege

I’ve heard this more times than I can count, and I always shut it down the same way. Privilege doesn’t have a damned thing to do with you as an individual, but rather the way societal structures reward groups of people for whiteness on the one hand while penalizing other groups of people for their non-whiteness on the other. You may not like the term white privilege, but that doesn’t change the fact that it exists in every institution in American society. Men don’t like the term male privilege very much either, but that doesn’t change the fact that society is uniquely suited to their specifications while the rest of us must work harder if we hope to achieve the same things.

4. I’ve been the victim of reverse racism

In case you haven’t heard, reverse racism isn’t a thing. Racism arises out of a system of supremacy used to keep one group of people elevated above another group, and that kind of oppression only runs one way in this country. So that one time a POC didn’t want to sit with you at lunch or be your friend has nothing to do with ‘reverse racism’. That person might just be a jerk…or it might be you. Hard to tell. I wasn’t there.

5. All lives matter!

If this is your response to black lives matter, you need to cease and desist. When someone says we need to save the rainforest, do you shout: all land matters? If so, you might need more help than I can provide here, because that would be ridiculous. Black and brown people are killed by police at disproportionately higher rates than white people. That’s just a fact. And just like wanting to protect the rainforest from destruction because it’s in crisis doesn’t mean screw all the other land on the planet, wanting to protect black and brown lives from rampant police brutality doesn’t mean all other lives don’t matter.

6. Stop pulling the race card

This one is ridiculous as well. I’m a black woman. That’s the lens through which I see the world. If you’re white, that’s your lens. It just so happens that your lens is the default in this country. It’s why I have to go to the ethnic section in the grocery store to buy my shampoo while you just get to go to the shampoo aisle. Men don’t get accused of making everything about being men, even though EVERYTHING IS LITERALLY ABOUT THEM HAVING PENISES ALL THE TIME. But white men are the default. The rest of us are just making everything about our feminist vagendas or pulling the race card. It’s a microaggression. It’s a way to shut down a voice that’s saying something you don’t want to hear. No one can shrug out of their skin or their sex, and it’s unacceptable to demand a person try to do so in order to make you more comfortable.

7. Talking about race is so divisive; let’s unite and focus on the ‘real’ issues

It’s extremely easy to tell folks not to worry about issues of inequality when you are the beneficiary of privilege–be it men telling women to set aside issues of gender inequality or white folks telling people of color to simmer down about racial inequality. In the last election cycle, issues that referenced these struggles for equality were called identity politics. But what isn’t identity politics? If you’re lucky enough that you are the default (stand up so we can see you, white gents), you’re interests just get called politics and the rest of us are told to wait quietly for our turn, which will come after all the ‘important’ work has been done…

Do you want to know what’s divisive? Inequality. That involves literally separating groups of people and putting certain groups above others. Contrary to popular belief, bringing up the fact that inequality exists isn’t divisive. It’s actually an attempt to bring people together.

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, but it’s a start. If you truly want to do better, change starts with the woman or man you see in the mirror.

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The KKK is the Least of My Worries

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There’s been a lot of talk about race since Election Day 2016 and a lot of outrage on the part of white America at the sight of Nazis marching down Main Street as they spew hatred and hold their tiki torches high. These alarmed folks exclaim that since the election, racists are suddenly coming out of the woodwork, emboldened by Trump’s divisive rhetoric. But this just isn’t the case. The current administration is merely the symptom of a much more insidious disease, not the disease itself. It’s an ailment that has existed since before the birth of this nation and continues to fester to this day, interwoven into every facet of American life.

As a person of color, the in your face hatred of a proud KKK member is actually less problematic than the systemic, institutional racism that has festered and grown mostly unchecked over the last four hundred years. Why is that, you ask? Because so many people refuse to believe that this kind of all-encompassing racism even exists. If someone calls me a racial slur, or proudly waves a confederate or Nazi flag, I see that person. I know what that person stands for. The issue is where these people fit into society. Are they teaching my daughter at school? Are they conducting my job interview or processing my loan paperwork while simultaneously injecting conscious or subconscious racism? And it’s not just them. It’s the society that birthed and nurtured them.

When this country was born, people of color were property, and it stayed that way for hundreds of years. After slavery was abolished, Jim Crow laws were instituted to make sure blacks couldn’t rise above the status of even the poorest white person. Most people will acknowledge that ugly part of American history, but will also swear up and down that when the Civil Rights Movement took place, we were all finally equal, holding hands, and judging each other by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin. But that’s not true at all. The color of a person’s skin continues to make all the difference.

When I talk about racism, I don’t really mean the person calling me the N word. Not that it’s an uplifting experience to confront someone who hates you simply because of your skin color, but what I’m talking about runs much deeper. It’s the cop who stops me for something he’d never stop a white person for doing. It’s the inequity in the criminal justice system that gets me three times the sentence of a white offender who committed an identical crime. It’s the teacher, potential boss, or stranger on the street who looks at me and thinks ‘criminal’, ‘uneducated’, ‘single mother of four kids from four different fathers’, or ‘lazy welfare recipient’ solely based on the color of my skin, and then treats me accordingly, not giving me that job, that scholarship, or the time of day. It’s what makes a black or brown shooter a terrorist but a white shooter mentally ill and in need of society’s help. These things aren’t always in your face. They are the foundation upon which our society was given room to flourish and develop into the place it is today. As such, they are everywhere among us, guiding our actions and influencing the way we treat each other.

So, what do we do about it? I wish I had all the answers on how to tear down four hundred years of racial inequity and prejudice in our institutions and attitudes towards one another. But the first step is recognizing the problem for what it is and not allowing the narrative to be one that allows you to do nothing. Racism isn’t a problem that was taken care of in the 1960’s. It isn’t anything that can be blamed on the current administration. It existed well before all of us were born and, unless we do something drastic to start changing the situation, it will exist long after we are all dead. Condemning some blatant racists marching with tiki torches and then going back to the relative comfort of one’s normal life does nothing. We have to shine a light on the dark, ugly underbelly of our society, and we have to face some hard truths about ourselves and this country that we claim to love. We have to be courageous enough to be uncomfortable. Have those hard conversations, hold yourself accountable, and then do the same for those around you. Because if we don’t commit to doing better, absolutely nothing will change. I love this country enough to want to see it do better. Do you?

*Published in Florida Today and the Tallahassee Democrat.

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