I assume this is where i'll talk about things I like, or my day, or something mundane like that.
i hope you don't find me pretentious. :-(
It should go without saying, but I am anti-racist, pro-palestine, and everything else that implies i actually care about other people. Don't try to take my words and twist them to serve a hateful rhetoric. That's NOT sexy. If you feed my work to ai, that's between you and God, ok?Introduction
Hi. I'm 16 years old. I like super heroes and music. I like to make art and bracelets. I love my family. I love my friends. I love nature. Something that bewilders me is how comfortably-- adamantly one would argue I am ugly, lesser, and shameful because of my phenotype. My body is brown. My love is 'counter culture'. I feel like both of these came naturally for me. I'm just like this. And yet, my existence is constantly debated on, called 'political' when all I want to do is go thrift with friends and dance to music in my room. I'm just a kid. I have never related to the threat that many experience when they encounter someone that's not like them.
I wonder: what is it that you see in this stranger that you hate about yourself so much? Do you get this pang of discomfort, thinking 'it's unfair; they have what I don't, and I'm more deserving than they are'. Or is it the way their flaws aren't exclusive to them? Is it the way you could be just like them, if not worse? Do you find yourself desperately clawing out your own humanity? Preferring stoicism over grief for what's happened generations ago? Thinking that the bare minimum of being 'not racist' will serve as a proportionate reparation?
Now, before you're upset, allow me to add that no one is innocent. It will require the efforts not of an individual, but of a community to question and deconstruct the oppressive dynamics that have been intentionally implemented in the system we all reside in. I, a Black and Korean girl, believe I have unresolved internalized racism, prejudice, and misogyny, and you do too.
When you live in a place where the land is stolen and people are called illegal and their bodies are treated as tools and targets rather than revered for being simply human, you will always have hate and fear caked into your perception of the world. Even the kindest, most educated people still pursue the dismantling of the most veiled bias. It is a mission. It is a goal. And if you truly believe in human rights, it is your responsibility.
Everything that follows, is going to relate to human rights in some way.
Infighting in Marginalized Communities
1: "You're not Black enough."
The phrases: 'not Black enough' and 'acting white' have been thrown around enough for most to be familiar with them, alongside many others that share an obscured quintessence of exclusion and reinforcement of potentially harmful stereotypes.
Frankly, these phrases are just poorly executed retaliation towards oppressive groups. When one criticizes another for behaving like a white person, that is reprisal towards white people for the generations of systemic abuse that racial minorities have experienced, yet it only hurts their own community because they're saying it to another person of color.
Typically these statements are provoked when a Black person enjoys something that many white people enjoy, when they don't use AAVE (African American Vernacular Language), or are visibly multiracial. For example, a Black person could tell another Black person that they enjoy analyzing literature. The response is 'why are you acting white?'.
The first person in the example was demonstrating that they are intelligent and educated, and then their racial identity was questioned. This implies that one cannot be intelligent and Black at the same time, and that rhetoric is more harmful to Black people than it is to white people, regardless of the fact it was motivated by prejudice towards white people.
this essay is unfinished, but i will list off things i want to delve into later on.