Why Are Black Folks Always Expected To Forgive & Forget Blatant Racism

Why Are Black Folks Always Expected To Forgive & Forget Blatant Racism
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So, I know this story is a few days old and I wasn’t even going to voice my opinion on it at first, because every other day, I’m reading a different article about my people being degraded, demeaned, or shot down in the street, simply for being Black. Honestly, while it’s all very sad, it’s exhausting to put so much energy into getting angry over each and every story; because all too often, we are being made to feel like WE don’t matter. Our lives don’t matter, our children don’t matter, and it’s infuriating, to say the least.

Now, just in case you haven’t been keeping up with this story, the beautiful young lady pictured above is 13-year-old Mo’ne Davis, who has been making a great name for herself on the baseball field, here lately. She’s not out in the streets, twerkin’, drinking, smoking, or having underage sex. Nope, instead she’s a Little League World Series star, and a few days ago she was subjected to the worst type of cyber bullying. Not only was she referred to as a “slut” on twitter, the name-calling came from an adult white man named Joey Casselberry, a Bloomsburg University baseball player, after it was reported that Disney wanted to make a movie about Mo’ne. His exact tweet goes as follows:“Disney is making a movie about Mo’Ne Davis? WHAT A JOKE. That slut got rocked by Nevada.”

He tried it. Then in typical racist, cowardly fashion, once Black Twitter got on his ass and he was booted off the baseball team (rightfully so) he gave the usual, “I’m so sorry for my comments, blah, blah, blah,” and he deactivated his Twitter account. And as for Mo’ne? She took the high road, accepted his apology, and even asked that the University re-instate his ignorant ass on the team. Her response was: While I admit I was pretty hurt when I read his comments, I felt sad that he was dismissed from the team…,” the Philadelphia pitcher wrote. “I am sure Joey Casselberry has worked very hard to get where he is and dreams of playing in the major leagues. For this reason, I’m asking you to please allow him back on the team so that he can continue to chase his dream. He made one dumb mistake. I’m sure he would go back and change it if he could. Everyone makes mistakes,” Davis echoed Monday on SportsCenter where she was being interviewed about her new book, “Mo’ne Davis: Remember My Name.” But I’m over white folks who sit behind their laptops and cell phones making bigoted statements about Black folks everyday, and their rehearsed apologies that are issued only if their jobs or way of living is threatened, not because they truly mean it. That apology is like saying, just put a bandage on the cut, it’ll feel better in the morning. Newsflash, underneath the bandage, the cut is still there, and it still hurts.

Yes, it clearly shows that she, at 13, is far more intelligent than this clown, and it’s very admirable. But what I want to know is, why are Black people ALWAYS expected to take the high road? Why do we always have to forgive, forget, and move on? Every time the police shoot our mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, cousins, and friends down in the street like dogs, we’re supposed to accept the lame ass excuses given for doing so, and move. We’re supposed to encourage protesters to remain peaceful and not react with anger...you know, because that’s frowned upon by the very white folks who continue killing us. F.Y.I.: We’re tired of being peaceful, responding with class, and simply moving on until the next tragedy occurs.

Privileged white folks have been on a roll here lately, taking cheap shots and below-the-belt comments disguised as jokes at us for the past couple of weeks. Not long after a grown ass man called the thirteen year old Mo’ne a slut, Giuliana Rancic made a racist, demeaning statement about Zendaya’s faux dreadlocks on Fashion Police, saying,The hair to me on her is making her a little more boho. Like I feel like she smells like patchouli oil. Or weed. And what did she do once the relentless force, known as Black Twitter, read her ass? She gave a half-ass, lame apology, then went on about her business. And what did Zendaya do? Once again, she took the high road (after a very long social media post calling Giuliana out on her crap) and forgave her. And lets not forget our own FLOTUS, Michelle Obama being attacked by fashion reporter, Rodner Figueroa, who said, on national tv, that ‘she looked like one of the Planet of the Apes characters.’ He only apologized and tried to explain himself, after he found himself in the unemployment line the following Monday morning. We’ve always known that there is a war on Black men, but my sista’s seem to have joined them on the front lines, battling for equality and respect from white society.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. Black women, especially, are being insulted everyday, all day, by the media, our peers, the entertainment industry...and we’re always told to just suck it up and deal with it. Had First Lady Obama (I’ll give her the respect she deserves and use her official title, because it’s rarely done these days in the media) responded to this ass clown, she would have been deemed as a race baiter, too sassy, or having a bad attitude, or any of the the other negative comments often made about black women. Why does a 13 year old child even have to endure being called out of her name, and on social media for the world to see.

How can we fix the issue of bullying in our schools, when we have so-called grown people who should know better, teaching their kids racism and harassing people of color everyday?

I can say this right now, maybe that’s why God has never made it possible for me to be famous, because while I don’t feel the need to respond to each and every negative thing said about me, I would definitely get my point across: I refuse to take any bull**** off some racist coward lying down. Come for me and I’ll happily tell you exactly how I feel about you and your opinion of me.These people need to be put in their damn places, and we need to stop accepting weak apologies from people who want to feel bigger and better about themselves by tearing a black woman down, by any means necessary.

I’m over white folks who sit behind their laptops and cell phones making bigoted statements about Black folks everyday, and their rehearsed apologies that are issued only if their jobs or way of living is threatened, not because they truly mean it. That apology is like saying, just put a bandage on the cut, it’ll feel better in the morning. Newsflash, underneath the bandage, the cut is still there, and it still hurts..

Yes, Mo’ne accepted her bully’s apology, but as a child who still has a lot of growing up to do, that comment is going to follow her for quite a while...and all the while she’s asking forgiveness for the man who caused her the pain. Everyday, we’re seeing and hearing about kids being bullied by their peers in school, some so badly that they feel they have no other choice than to commit suicide. There are anti-bullying campaigns created, designed to put an end to bullying. But how can we fix the issue of bullying in our schools, when we have so-called grown people who should know better, teaching their kids racism and harassing people of color everyday?

Every year, Conservative white women get their panties in a bunch over the BET Special, Black Girls Rock. Some of them even came up with a #WhiteGirlsRock hashtag because for two hours, Black women are getting the praise and attention usually reserved for them, and they can’t stand sharing the spotlight with us, even for one night. The thing is, everyday Black women are reminded that white women reign supreme, while we struggle to be accepted and appreciated and seen as equal, regardless of what degree we hold or how successful we are in our lives. If you have to ask why we need to be reminded that #BlackGirlsRock, I hope this article answers your question as to why a show like this is necessary, and why it isn’t a form of reverse racism, even though your ego tells you it is. It’s necessary, because every damn day, Black women are told we’re bitches, sluts, whores, look like apes, smell like weed because we wear dreads...the list goes on and on. The media and common everyday bigots, have no love for the sista’s, so we have to create events to show some love and celebrate ourselves. We definitely won’t get it from anywhere else. Black women have endured disrespect, torture,rape, mental, emotional, and physical abuse for centuries, and we grin and bear it, because that’s what we’re expected to do.So, all this neck and eye-rolling, smart mouth, and finger-snapping that we do, and the Angry Black Woman Syndrome (ABWS) that people like to associate with us, it didn’t just drop out of the sky. I only recently learned that ABWS was a real thing- while doing research for this post- but it sounds like a bunch of B.S. created by one of our own black men, unfortunately, as an alternative to calling us what he really wants to refer to us as- angry black bitches.

Black men, especially, should be the last one’s to put us down, but sadly, we get the most criticism from them. Aren’t they angry about being racially profiled by the police everyday, about their lives being taken everyday, because someone felt threatened by them, so they just pulled out their guns and shot them down, to eliminate the threat? Exactly! So, are we not supposed to be angry that we’re constantly being made to feel like we don’t measure up to other races of women, EVERYDAY? Then to add insult to injury, we have misguided ‘celebrities’ (I’ll use that word lightly) like Raven-Symone, who is African-American (even though she says she doesn’t consider herself to be) and a lesbian- defending the guy who made the comment about the FLOTUS, talking about, “Some people do look like animals.” She, of all people, should know what the discrimination and hurtful, judgmental comments feel like. Have several seats, Raven. Right beside Common- the rapper, turned Oscar winner, who decided to chime in with his two cents by saying,”Racism would disappear and wouldn’t be an issue if Black people would just forget about the past and extend a hand in love,” to the very white people who hate us so much; that, he said, would cure the issue of racism in America. Someone needs to take that Oscar trophy he won, and hit him over the head with it and hopefully knock some damn sense into him. People like these two, are the reason why other races feel like that have permission to insult us any time they feel like it. Our own, one they’ve made it, suddenly turn a blind eye to the issues that are affecting US everyday. Newsflash, rubbing elbows with Hollywood celebrities doesn’t make you exempt from still being called a nigger in the eyes of racist white folks, whenever you get through talking that nonsense.

Black women have endured disrespect, torture,rape, mental, emotional, and physical abuse for centuries, and we grin and bear it, because that’s what we’re expected to do.

Will the blatant racism ever stop? Probably not. All I can say is, people know who to mess with. This college player, weak bully that he is, chose Mo’ne because he knew she couldn’t- and at the advice of those around her- probably wouldn’t defend herself. But I’ll bet he wouldn’t have tried it with Serena Williams, who is constantly the butt of many bigoted Conservatives lame jokes. They hate her because she’s so great and the only way to try to bring her down is by making rude comments about her body, constantly saying she looks like a man. She wouldn’t have hesitated to put him in his place, in that nice-nasty way that she does, then she would have crip-walked out the room; and that’s exactly what needs to start happening more often.

As long as social media gives these cowards a platform, we’ll keep reading about stories like these, and until we’re able to stand up for ourselves, the results will continue to be the same. We don’t want to be associated with that ABWS, so we sit and say nothing. Oh, hell to the nah! I will be all that and then some, just as soon as I get done telling you to kiss my angry Black ass. I refuse to stand by and let anybody demean, degrade, and belittle me, just so they can feel superior to me and have a good laugh at my expense. I can’t stand Kanye West as much as the next person, but people still haven’t gotten over what he did to Taylor Swift at the MTV awards in 2009, when he boldly crashed the stage as she gave her acceptance speech, deboed the mic out of her hand, and went on a tirade about how Beyonce should have won that category instead of her, and they won’t. Even though it seems the two of them have kissed and made up, he’ll always be looked at as the big, bad black man, who bullied a poor, defenseless white girl in front of the entire world. See, that’s that white privilege, double-standard ish. Mo’ne was more than likely told that in order to sustain her budding baseball career, she should brush that slut comment off, let it ride, and be the bigger person. She doesn’t get the opportunity to be looked at as the innocent victim...not according to the many white folks who laughed at, liked, shared, and agreed with her attackers nasty comment about her.

When white folks start feeling threatened by a Black person’s greatness, they resort to racism to try and knock us back down a notch or two in an attempt to remind us that for decades, we were inferior to them. We need to stop accepting racists’ half-assed apologies and demand that we be shown respect. We are unapologetically unwilling to continue turning the other cheek, being the bigger person, and accepting ‘that’s just the way things are. Make them accountable for their actions, by any means. Start screen-shotting their words and make them go viral. I can’t list the number of times I’ve came across stories of white people using social media platforms to show their true colors in regards to Black people by going on racist tirades, then they lose their jobs when someone screenshots those posts and puts them in the hands of their employers. Yes, the First Amendment gives us the right to free speech, but just know that while God forgives, Black Twitter doesn’t. They don’t forgive easily and definitely don’t forget. You’ve been warned.

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