By Kejhonti Neloms

I used to be shook when my favorite white people would be white. I find myself thinking they really care (and can care) about my Black queer life. I catch myself slipping often.  White supremacy never relents and I always have to redouble my convictions in order to protect myself. It’s a lot of pressure, but I feel better and safer for maintaining my distance from these moral monsters.

White supremacy be gaslighting. White supremacy will have you to believe that not all white people are racist. White supremacy will have you to believe that there is hope in that particular white person who makes you feel human sometimes.

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I’ve given-up hope and it’s refreshing because I don’t like uncertainty. Believing that all white people will fail me all the time gives me something sturdy to stand on. When they prove themselves to be white, I’m no longer shook, and when they come through for me it’s an almost welcomed surprise. I’m blasé blasé to the wavering and inconsistent returns of having white people as ‘friends.’

Just recently I had to catch myself from slipping. I’ve been frequenting a rather new bar here in Mexico. The bartender is a nice white woman—or whatever—and we always make pleasant conversation. When I arrived in Oaxaca, she immediately offered me a job as a bartender. I’ve grown to like her to be honest. But there are plenty of white people that I like that I can not afford to get close to. It costs too much. I am a very sensitive person. Regardless, I make conversation with her because I’m lonely often, and she, an extrañjero like me, speaks my native language.

At the bar last Wednesday, this old gay white man offered me some jelly belly’s and I said that I’d rather not. What follows is a story of white violence in and of itself. This old gay white man insisted and insisted that I try these fucking jelly bellies that I already knew I hated, and I, wanting to be the good Black, the faithful Black, the Black Black, accepted the candy. Ugh, now i carry the guilt of relenting under the pressures of white insistence. I carry the guilt of knowing better, and still accepting the candy. They’re fucking jelly beans, and here I am crying for Gemmel. It’s so easy to slip. But that’s not what I want to focus on; I’m just not ready to write that article.

I want to focus on how when the conversation progressed into candies we like and dislike and I said I hate jelly beans like I hate sour patch kids, this white barwoman, that I actually had grown fond of, felt the need to say, “Wow you’re so negative. Let’s talk about candies that you do like.”

White people love love love imagining us as the quintessential negative. They need to. They can’t imagine anything more negative. They’re conscious of their crimes. They not stupid. Painting us as negative allows them to justify their monstrous behavior toward us. It’s really their own guilt that they hate. It’s another level of abstraction. It’s their cognitive dissonance at work—again.

It’s how they measure light and dark, yours or mine, profit or debt. It’s  Manichaeistic. She didn’t say that my opinion about gelatin-like candies is negative, she said that I’m negative. Something in her compelled her to value my whole ontology based off of candy preferences. It was an automatic response for her, and I’m sure she’s not thinking about it, but here I am, a week later, writing about it.

And of course we’re all familiar with this phenomenon. We are constantly bombarded with “Why do you look so angry all the time.” We know that at the same time white people dehumanize us, they also imbue us with superhuman attributes (like the ability to withstand multiple gunshots). We know that Darren Wilson told a jury that 18-year old Michael Brown appeared to become stronger the more he shot him. We know that doctor’s don’t give us medicine because they believe that we . It’s another level of abstraction.

We know all this. I know this, and still I was hurt when that white woman, whom I have grown to like, called me negative. It is so exhausting wading through the not-so-micro-aggressions of whiteness. I wasn’t surprised she said that, but I was surprised that I was caught slipping. Sometimes I just want to go out and have a drink without being faced with the awful legacy that is whiteness. It’s too much to ask, I been knew.

There are no safe spaces for Black people as long as whiteness exists. I know this because I have been to every white space. I’ve been in their academies. I’ve been in their hospitals. I’ve been to their banks. I’ve been to their clubs. I’ve been to their homes. I’ve been to their dinner tables. I’ve been to their bar mitzvahs. I’ve been to their theatres. I’ve been to their food banks. I’ve been to their funerals. I’ve been to their plays. I’ve been to their raves. I’ve been at their death beds. I’ve been to their galleries. I have been to every white space. There is no hope for us while there is hope for them.

Does it hurt to have a white friend let you down? Does it hurt worse when your sage auntie from the south looks at you and says, “you should have known better”? Maybe you were 16 and this girl would take your Black flesh in the back of her new chevy, but she would never date you. Maybe a white man that you trusted pressured you into sex. Maybe you don’t know if you can actually call it rape, because you let him do it- or whatever- but now you feel really bad about it and you don’t talk about it anymore. Maybe your white childhood friend mentions how their uncle Terry is a cop, but he’s one of the good ones. Maybe you were 25 and in a physical fight that you didn’t start, and your white friend of ten years didn’t jump-in to help you.

It is ok to give up on all white people. I wrote this to remind myself not to be caught slipping.

But when you slip, I will be there to catch you. I’ll be there to catch you like my sister Ryeshia catches me when I be slipping. I will be there to catch you when you forget yourself. I will catch you like my Momma caught me when I couldn’t understand why I could go out to my white friends houses, but they could never come to mine. I will catch you. I’ll believe you. This I promise.

Suggested Reading:

“White People Have No Place In Black Liberation.” Kevin Rigby Jr. and Hari Ziyad, RaceBaitR, 2016

Christina Sharpe, In The Wake: On Blackness and Being Duke University Press, (2016)

“The Lie of Voluntary Migration: Territories of Whitenesss and Death” Amber Butts, BlaQueerFlow, 2017

Kejhonti Neloms is a queer student/teacher. He has dreams of starting a community center for black queer kids.

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