teal credit card digits close-up

That’s it. I am turning in my Black card. I have been officially kicked out the Black peoples club. You see, I recently wrote two posts about giving up rap music and imagining what if Black women treated Black men the way they treated us (check them out if you haven’t read them yet). Both received a lot of attention. The posts had their detractors and that’s fine. The common argument against them was that somehow by rejecting rap and it’s baggage and misogyny that I was giving up my authentic Blackness. You know what? They are right. I am but it is not what they think.

  • If being authentically Black means embracing every racist, misogynistic, colorist, homophobic and transphobic stereotype of Blackness, screw you. I don’t want it.
  •  If being called a bi**h, a hoe, and a ni**a for your entertainment and to pad a corporation’s bank account is authentic Blackness, you can keep it.
  • If eurocentric features on Black people is the standard of Black beauty, you can have it.
  • If embracing a monolithic view of Blackness while losing my individuality is authentic Blackness, I don’t need  it.
  • If acquiring an education equates to being White while making Blackness synonymous with ignorance is authentic Blackness, bless your heart. Give it to your mamma.
  • If accepting and embracing slave era stereotypes like the mammy, Jezebel or Sapphire about Black women that are used to dehumanize me is authentically Black, I don’t want it
  • If labeling anything Black as “hood”, “ghetto”, or “ratched” is authentically Black, shove it.
  • If accepting violence, suffering, mediocrity, failure and abuse is authentic Blackness, thanks but no thanks.
  • If waiting for someone or something to save you when I can to save myself is authentically Black, forget about it.

If that is what authentic Blackness is heck to the yeah I am turning in my Black card. Straight DECLINED! I won’t concede or apologize for rejecting each one of them. I will not accept the slave mentality inferiority conditioning definition of authentic Blackness. What those who disagreed with me dropping rap music and rejecting misogyny fail to see is that pointing out the wrongs and insisting on making them right isn’t rejecting authentic Blackness. I am not rejecting Blackness. I am rejecting your sick sad version of authentic Blackness. It is about seeing authentic Blackness as I see it. I see Blackness as greatness but hey. That’s just me.