Light-skinned, bi-racial, and white-passing folx: we need to do better

I wanna talk for a minute to light-skinned Black folx (particularly my bi-racial peeps) and white-passing folx who identify with a marginalized race. For me, this is a consistent growth process and something I’m constantly unwinding and working out. As time passes, I will find errs in this and I hope to g-d I do because that means I’ve grown. Know I’m coming here fully aware that I have limitations in this that I can’t yet see and I invite your reflections and the gifts you choose to give me in this conversation.

I need us to do a better job around the way we show up and the ways we internalize our superiority because of our skin tone. To pretend that the racist roots of colorism don’t live inside our bodies and psyche is to live in a fool’s dream. Just because we aren’t the source of the oppressor doesn’t mean we are exempt from using the oppressors tools. In fact, we are often invited to use the tools in covert ways. And overt ways. When I think about how I used to move through this world (and sometimes still do), the way I gleefully drowned myself in the mirage of professionalism (which is actually the desert of white supremacy culture), the way I bought the notion that somehow I had figured out how to beat the game because white folx felt comfortable with me, I legit want to vomit. Shame comes. Then guilt. Then self-hate. Then disappointment. And then anger that I was there for so long. And more anger that I still get there before I realize it. Sometimes I can tap into gratefulness that I’m working toward different and hope that I will do better. But mostly I fear that I’m still harmful AF and perpetuating the very things I’m trying to end. I worry that I’m unable to see how I’m f-ing it up and will eventually stop growing. I worry that I’ll tap out when it gets too hard or my sensitive ass feelings get hurt. Cuz I get to do that. I get to tap out when I want. I have that privilege.

Is it possible that I, like most Black and brown folx, am trying to also survive this life with the least amount of harm and scars? Yes. Were/are my intentions malicious? No. Was/is my behavior rooted in survival? Yes. Did/do I still experience racism? Yes. Did/do I really believe in my heart of hearts I was/am doing the right thing? Yes. Was I in miserable, confusing pain that I couldn’t quite pinpoint or even access? Yes. Does any of the aforementioned excuse my actions, reduce harm, or make it okay? NO. There is harm I caused that is irreparable. Not fixable. Unable to be recovered. There are folx out there who have had experiences with me that paint me as the villain in their story and they are absolutely right. I can’t and I don’t need to change that. There is likely nothing I can actually do to fix it and knowing that I left them with things in their laps they have to repair is devastating. Imagine what it feels like for them. It’s also true that the harm I caused stretches farther than I’m aware of. My work is not to relieve myself of how bad I feel for the harm I’ve inflicted. My work is to be present with how I feel about the harm I’ve inflicted and actually use that internal feedback to help me do different next time. My work is to seek out where and why I choose these behaviors and unwind where to actually interrupt. My work is to get clear on which pieces are the symptoms and which pieces are the root issues. My work is to center my own healing so I can stop being harmful to others — and myself.

I’m naming my sh*t first because the more I talk about it, the more I’m able to be real and honest with myself and do a better job of being accountable. I’m also naming it because I’m hoping that reading another person’s sh*t will help others get comfortable with their own sh*t and will bring to the surface the things you can feel but your conscious mind often shoves down. Silencing the ways that colorism happens and how lighter-skinned folx enable it doesn’t keep it at bay — quite the contrary. It creates a divide that deeply and negatively impacts our darker-skinned fam and pushes all of us closer to the poisonous, razor teeth of white culture. White culture eats all of us, just some of us more slowly than others.

When we have a closer proximity to whiteness, be it our skin tone, our vernacular, our hair, the way we carry ourselves through the world, being raised in a mostly white environment, etc. the examination of our own internalized racial inferiority AND superiority is critical. How we orient to whiteness and our own view of ourselves with/in it impacts us AND the marginalized communities we identify with. Because whiteness’ narcissistic nature requires it to be constantly reassured, validated, and coddled, it will use us for this purpose. Make no mistake. And if it can wield us to be a shield between it and the truth of it’s racist nature, it will sacrifice us without a second thought. And then gaslight us when we finally figure it out.

Whether we choose to access it or not, we have also been conditioned to believe that we are superior to our fam in our marginalized groups who are farther away from whiteness. Often, our definitions of success and “rightness” and goals are created by that superior belief. We are also given more opportunity and access. More credibility and trust. We are seen as the “standard”…the way Black and brown folx should be and operate. We are often seen as close enough to whiteness that we don’t consistently pose a threat but far enough away that we will never fully be safe. I hope that you are able to disabuse yourself of the notion that anything that whiteness sets as a standard is worth subscribing to. It all feeds the same monster and drives us away from who we actually are, leaving us in this weird limbo place where we belong nowhere while the scattered remains of the harm we perpetuate haunts us like a ghost we try to tune out. It’s there. It’s really there. And we get to choose, in every moment of our lives, if we are going to feed the monster and grow the ghost or if we are going to stop being the shield for whiteness. Are we going to stop standing in the gap? Are we going to stop enabling the illest of poisons or are we going to keep sipping on it and slipping it into our peers’ drinks? What choice are we making?

I honestly don’t know what the road to repair looks like. I don’t know what healing generations of racist borne colorism trauma looks like. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully do right by my Black peers who I try hard AF to center, always. I keep trying, though. Over and over. And I know that my willingness to listen and adjust, when Black folx farther from whiteness than I am tell me I’m fucking up, is critical in my own harm reduction. It’s a gift that I don’t deserve, quite frankly. I also know that being trustworthy and safe takes time, work, and consistent examples of being trustworthy and safe. I know that I hope that we are able to get messy in this and open up about it and get the festering wound healed instead of hidden. I know that the seduction of orienting to whiteness to make life easier (temporarily) is real and is constantly in need of excavation. And I also know that the pain of belonging nowhere is sometimes overwhelmingly suffocating and makes me want to give up (and again, giving up is a privilege). I have learned, though, that as I stop cozying up to whiteness, as I relentlessly root out where it lives in me, as I make new definitions and measures for my life that live outside of whiteness and capitalism and colonization, belonging inches closer and I find the pieces of myself that the monster stole and the ghost has tried to hide. I get moments where belonging taps me on the heart like an old friend and reminds me that it’s there when I chose to be real about my sh*t. I hope, for the sake of all of us trying to survive this g-dforsaken weird and harmful alternate reality, those of us more adjacent to whiteness choose to leave it. Every day. Every moment.