The Journey to Whiteness
There’s Bleaching, and Then There’s Just Hating the Skin You’re In
I finally got around to reading some of the pieces that I had stowed away in my Medium inbox, many of which are BHM centric and thusly, focused around race. The last one in my inbox was this piece by Rebecca Stevens, exploring the conversation around how often Black women (especially African women) are encouraged to bleach our skin to ‘look more appealing.’ It got me ruminating about other ways in which Black people here in the US have tried play Pretend-White.
Now admittedly, this isn’t going to have documentation and data in the manner in which Rebecca’s does-probably because the issue in which I’m discussing falls under ‘documented, but not really.’ Her paper made me think about all the ways in which some Black folx around us will 100% throw our own under the bus if it gets us closer to fame, to glory, to ‘recognition.’
It’s not quite the same conversation, but it is absolutely the same energy: I’ll do whatever it takes to be more desirable/approachable [to white people]. I saw it constantly when some choice streamers joined in the Black History Month activation who have, loudly on main, exclaimed ‘oh….I don’t really like those Twitch activations, they feel too much like favoritism or like we’re getting a hand-out,’ or had entire kee-kee and elbow bumping discussions publicly about how ‘yea, fuck Twitch, I’ll never say yes to them’, then I immediately saw them in not one, but three activations within the year that were Black-centric.
The biggest offender award will consistently go to the Black men who have no qualms talking down to and belittling us (‘us’ being Black women), informing us that the way in which we carry ourselves (read: with self-respect and knowing our worth) is why we’re always in harm’s way. These same men who tell us it’s our fault we’re harassed, bullied, and pushed out of platforms will then expect the same women they disrespected to come run and save them when they get met with the same treatment (read: treated just as badly as we were, but were too busy scolding us to notice).
In light of recent issues, I’ve even seen Black people gladly and gleefully offer themselves up as ‘Good Blacks’ to white [people] who have none of their interests or safety in mind-not that it matters, they just want a chance at The Big Shot. No number of Black bodies under their feet is too high for either party.
I notice the Black people engaging this view Blackness as an auto-default for ‘unworthy,’ or at the very baseline ‘something needing a little boost’. They convince themselves that we can’t be successful unless we’re held up and paraded explicitly by white people. This is on the week-long eve of a Black woman content creator unironically teaming up with a white supremacist to do exactly that: bring herself closer to whiteness, quietly hoping that this will be what elevates her.
She will say she’s pro-Black, while tearing down another Black woman for things she doesn’t comprehend-but she’s doesn’t actually care about the fine details. She just knows that this very popular white man notices me, so this is my chance. She’ll applaud and welcome supremacists cheering her on, even if that fame lasts only 15 seconds. The four Black people who agree with her will serve as validation.
Now, this is an extreme case of self-hate: a conviction that it’s perfectly reasonable to say ‘no racism, no sexism’ but then simultaneously say ‘I don’t support BLM as a Black person because they’re a terrorist group. They don’t represent me.’ I don’t bother unpacking this mess with people anymore because I don’t have time and they don’t have the range.
Like covert and overt racism with white people, these engagements of covert (I’ll surround myself with white people) and overt (I’m not appealing unless I look more light) interest in white-adjaency are evident, just not as loudly.
Noticeable when Black men opt to protect their ‘white friends’ over Black women who do nothing but help them while their white friends attack.
Noticeable when Black men are called in about how what they’re doing is insensitive to other marginalized voices and their response is to block the voices.
Noticeable when people who otherwise have nothing to say chime in to add their two cents on a topic that just-so-happens to be hot at current while antagonizing fellow Black people.
Noticeable when they only speak up about Blackness when it’s trending, but are otherwise silent in fear of ‘rocking the boat’-who knows what white person may be watching and denying you a job as a result?
It’s a similar ideation, but rather than go for ‘I want to physically look more white’, they want to keep the skin they’re in, but surround themselves with whiteness in the hopes it can be equated to success: ‘I want to be perceived as white-friendly, because then I will be perceived as successful.’ I’m of the mind it’s also why they get so viscerally angry when Black people who are unapologetically Black are given opportunities they think they deserve- “I’ve been behaving, and agreeing with more white people, so why do they get uplifted and I don’t?”
It’s been a week and all that original girl, who went on a white man’s podcast to bash a Black woman she knows nothing about, has to show for it is maybe another 100 followers and a DMCA strike (that she insists was a result of “e-fame”), while the white man who ‘afforded’ her a platform absorbs all her praise, makes sales from her foolishness, and has forgotten her just as quickly.
I hope that I’m still on this accursed rock for the day these groups realize that aligning yourself with white supremacy, even if only temporarily, will get you nothing but hurt. I say this as someone who went down this road in her early twenties. It’s dark, it’s dank, and when you’re done fooling around: you’re still Black, and will be treated as such.
The thought that you can’t have anti-Blackness in your heart while being Black is the smoothest ruse fledgling ‘activists’ have played to date to lure Black people from being ‘too Black to be palatable.’.
No amount of defending white people, pretending they’re your only friends, appealing to white people, or caping for white people is going to get you the approval you seek. Whatever that may look like. Bleaching yourself, or pandering to them, may make them like you more temporarily-but it’s never going to be a substitute for being respected, being valued, and being humanized. If you don’t think that’s true? All you have to do is remember:
Herman Cain was staunchly Republican, endorsed and loved everything Red, supported Trump vocally, threw his own under the bus consistently. He contributed to Fox News, had traction with conservative media outlets all over the US. He earned titles such as ‘the Colin Powell of American capitalism.’ He ate, slept, a dripped American Conservatism, and made attacking Barack Obama a sport. Despite lying as adjacent to whiteness as he humanly could, when he died due to COVID-19 complications that spurned as a direct result of attending a Trump rally and being staunchly anti-mask, he wasn’t even afforded a full 16 hours of air time from the party he worked so tirelessly for.
In their respective ‘Health and Death’ sections, Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio personality, has a full dedicated block documenting his health problems, medical breakthroughs, his final shows, and even where he was buried in my home town, on his Wiki page. It’s 14 lines long and goes out of it’s way to somewhat martyr him as an advocate for medical advancement for HOH/deaf people.
Herman Cain, a literal active Black Republican, was given one mention of prior cancer. Three of the five lines simply can be summed up to as follows:
“He went to some Trump rallies, got COVID, then died.”
It makes no mention of where he was buried-likely because the [people] writing it did not care, and those he fought so hard to get approval from cared even less. It’s made clear that this is just another dead Black dude.
Edit: and I cannot believe that the news about Stacy Dash just hit me on my feeds.
I cannot stress enough that these people do not care about you.
