Original Stories

Speech (If you're racist, get the fuck out, this aint for you)

Hearing non black people say shit like "finna" and "ion" and "deadass, sis, cap, on god," talking about boo boo the fool, etc etc makes me so incredibly irritated and uncomfortable and it irks me that I have to bring it up at all.
I get that I'm lightskinned and that I don't "talk hood" or "dress black," but that's still a part of my culture, my people, the way I was raised, and I do use those phrases. It's fucking hilarious how my generation is supposed to be so smart and  supposed to change all this shit, and yet they're the very ones using my language and my culture for clout when i constantly get told its rachet and inappropriate when i do it, and imagine how my fellow brothers and sisters, who are much darker skinned than me, feel.
It pisses me off because even if you meant no harm in saying those things, I know you know what they mean because my people have been correcting you every which way and all you do is take and take and take until we have nothing of our own anymore, once again losing what we had fought so fucking hard to have seeing as we will never even know who we are and where we come from.

I personally hardly ever talk about my struggles living as a black queer person, whether they be individual to me, or a general experience of my people. I dont talk about it because it brings back unwanted and undeserved trauma and fear and sadness that should not have to be brought upon me to speak for all the uncultured white folk to hear because they should already know by now. But they dont. Because what has the history book ever taught you but that we were simply treated as pets? What has the media ever shown you except tall tales of us bringing undoing upon ourselves? What has the news ever shown you except a mere 5 minutes of my people dying in the streets or disappearing while the others get days, weeks and even years.
You tell us you agree and say it's not fair. But what you never think to say or admit is that it's not right. You're so caught up in what you had been told, and yet I regret to inform you that it is all, quite literally, white lies.
And yet despite all that preaching you did about not being like the ones before you and how you love my kind, you still have yet to do even the smallest things that would help to slowly but surely change the pain and suffering and injustice of the millions of people who have died before and in front of you by the ones who proclaim to love all.
It was never about the movement, or a hashtag, or a like. The numbers you see are not the numbers that matter. The numbers you see on a screen cannot equate to the numbers you see on a row. You say you'll pay the toll and atone for those before you yet you still turn a blind eye and simply wait until we have our backs turned and suddenly you do not see us nor know who we are.
And it pains me. It pains me to live every day of my life in fear, trying not to make a decision I'll regret and having to remind my mother every day that I love her and that I hope she's there when I wake up in the morning, and to tell all my relatives the same.
It may not seem like a big issue to you, but to me, one single word can spiral into a moment of life or death in an instant. And in the blink of an eye, that one word has caused many to die.

(Did not intend for that to become a whole speech, but oh well)