Yes, I know I am starting my blog with a heavy topic but I finally feel inspired enough to write (in general) and this is a topic that lies close to my heart.
If you’re part of UK black twitter, hell twitter in general you may have witnessed Black British influencers, rappers and other online famous accounts have their problematic tweets dug up from the grave and exposed on the timeline. Unfortunately, many of these tweets were incredibly antiblack and honestly disgusting. While I will refer to a few examples of these tweets throughout the post, I don’t want to make this too focused on those particular people because honestly, this problem lies deep within the black community and they won’t be the first, nor last to be exposed for having such sentiments. I just want to say that I want to focus on the female perspective for now since a lot of the discussion on social media surrounds black women themselves..but YES a future post will be focused on Black men and their behaviour towards black women in online as well as daily spheres.
Reading an essay online by Justin A Coles, I found a definition of antiblackness that I agree wholeheartedly with which was “the legacy of… plantation-style slavery, which represents the human races structurally embedded degradation of Black people and communities through imagining Blackness as inherently negative, needing to be policed and/or
neutralized, and as outside the realms of humanity”. This definition proved especially relevant in light of the controversy which highlighted dehumanising tweets such as these:
as well as other tweets policing the makeup choices of black women such as this:
Justin A. Coles’ definition of antiblackness reaffirmed to me that I needed to start from the very beginning…YES, I am taking it there…slavery and colonisation. Because honestly, most, if not all black issues stem from there whether we choose to face that fact or not. A major proponent of white supremacy is to enforce a superiority complex between the white and black races but what majorly props white supremacy up as an ever-present issue is the superiority complex between black people which also helps to brew the intra-community antiblackness. This is literally why we have tired ass diaspora wars every 3 and a half seconds…yes you know what I am referring to; Africans vs Caribbeans, Caribbeans vs African Americans, African Americans vs Afro Latinxs, West African vs East African…its relentless. A majority of these diaspora wars are once again propped up by issues such as colourism, cultural differences and featurism to name a few issues, which result in certain members of the diaspora whether on a small or large scale to feel superior to others. Now that I have explained this, let’s move onto the topic at hand.
Seeing those tweets and the resulting outrage, I was glad to see that people quickly remembered what 2011-2016 twitter meant for black, especially black women. It meant being the target of ridicule, humiliation and insults. Black women were dragged for their facial features, body build, skin colour, behaviour and the way they spoke. Unfortunately, a lot of these opinions would be perpetuated by fellow black men and women. What is especially shocking to the timeline with Nella Rose’s tweets is that she is a black woman referring to other black people as apes, ridiculing black women for makeup choices and insulting the Somali language. This is such a shock to many because we are unfortunately used to seeing black men as the perpetrators of intracommunity antiblackness. As someone who went to an inner London all-girls school, where the main demographic was black students, seeing women being antiblack to each other was no surprise to me.
My entire secondary school experience was littered with memories of other students bullying other students in what I now realise was an antiblack way. Black students, not just light skin ones, would make fun of students for their dark skin, their big lips, flat noses, for not acting in a way that is “black enough” or sometimes even “too black”, their “nappy, bad” hair…the list goes on. Being in such close proximity to antiblackness perpetuated by fellow black students caused me, and probably many other of the black girls to internalise and effectually normalise the behaviour we were seeing. I mean, yes even back then I knew that referring to a particular girl’s larger lips in a sexual way when we were 15 was wrong (which was a real thing that happened by the way), but it had also become the norm. In retrospect, however, I acknowledge that the bullies were also victims of anti-blackness whether they were aware of it or not (since a lot of it was subconscious and ingrained in us from a young age) with mediums such as the media both traditional and social as well as daily experiences regarding race in primary school and sadly enough even within the family, that were all drenched in antiblack bias and outright racism.
Ultimately such behaviour, on such a public platform towards your OWN race is not only viewed by fellow black people, or members of your own community but by people from other races. And while we shouldn’t care what others think about the black community, the lack of unity and hateful speech amongst each other is something I have never seen with other races or ethnic groups. Such behaviour, on such a public platform towards your OWN race, is not only viewed by fellow black people, or members of your own community but by people from other races. And while we shouldn’t care what others think about our race, the lack of unity and hateful speech amongst each other is something I have never seen with other races/ethnic groups and absolutely does, and will set a precedent in regards to how other races may treat us, even if they do so subconsciously.
Now while I have briefly explained why others may feel as if they need to project their self-hatred onto others, I still need to make it clear that this behaviour is disgusting and is not acceptable. Not in 2012 and not now, nor ever. The excuse of it being due to age falls flat to me however I understand that people grow, evolve and change and we should definitely give people the space to do so. I want whoever is reading this, whether they’re black or not to think about anything they have may have said that was antiblack, or even been complicit in (even if you believed it was “just a joke” ) and really assess the reasoning behind that behaviour. Reflect on how and the ways you may hurt that person and also the way in which you too were complicit in white supremacy. Because yes people grow and evolve, people educate themselves and hopefully become better people but personally, if you’ve contributed to someone’s trauma, you need to bear that responsibility.
Also PLEASE delete your tweets regularly wtf especially if you no longer agree with the sentiment.