Have you seen “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls?” If not, watch it right now:
“Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls” is Franchesca Ramsey’s response to the popular video “Shit Girls Say”, which is a hilarious video that lampoons typical things that “girls” say. (One might think that a feminist like me would automatically find such a video sexist, but I don’t. There’s nothing mean-spirited or nasty about “Shit Girls Say”; it has the tone of a man gently and accurately ribbing one of his female friends or sisters on her mannerisms.) This video, however, takes the parody one step further and ribs white women on the unintentionally racist things they say to black women.
I found this video very, very funny, and also uncomfortable to watch. I’ve said at least three or four of those things over the course of my life, and found the “You guys can do so much with your hair!” the most damning on a personal level. There was a time in my early childhood where I envied black girls for their ability to style their hair and have the style stay in one place and wear dreadlocks and extensions and beads, and enthusiastically announced my envy to my black female classmates, completely unaware (because I was five) of the historical context of white people treating black women and their hair as public property.
As a fairly well-read adult, I now know better than to make these comments that unintentionally mark black women as foreign creatures in their own country that they live in, and this video was a good (and very funny lesson) about how even our intended compliments don’t sound complimentary when we consider historical context.
Apparently, not everyone saw it that way, and Tami Winfrey Harris covers some of the backlash here. Basically, white women have been crying “reverse racism!” and “why wouldn’t it be okay to do something called Shit Black Girls Say to White Girls?!”
It’s a really good article and you should read the whole thing. The writer covers the issue of microaggressions and the very real differences between racist comments from white people and racist comments from black people.
There’s nothing that needs to be added to this because she does a great job explaining the issue in detail, but I’ve been thinking about this issue for awhile and wanted to throw in another perspective – the perspective of a white woman who taught mostly black students for four years.
As a middle school teacher in an urban setting, I had many frank, honest discussions with my students about a wide variety of issues. They never held back from sharing their opinions about any controversial subjects, and class discussions about novels would sometimes sidetrack into loud, lively conversations.
The one issue where my students sometimes held back was on the subject of race.
It didn’t take long for one of the students to bring up the topic of race, but whenever it happened, they would do one of two things: they would show a moment’s hesitation and say, “I know not all white people are like this, but..” or offer a lot of other qualifiers to ensure they wouldn’t offend me, or they would make a comment about “white people” and then get the deer-in-the-headlights look and apologize with a, “Not you, miss!”
Keep in mind that some of these same kids would shout profanities at me if I told them to put their iPods away or spit out their gum, and say these profanities without a trace of shame or fear. They were only concerned about offending me on the issue of race. One day, one of my students announced, completely casually, “I don’t like Jewish people because they don’t like black people,” and after seeing the surprised look on my face, asked in horror, “Oh, are you Jewish? I’m sorry.” (I sputtered something about how prejudice of all kind is bad and then moved on because I honestly didn’t know how to respond to that.)
Except for that one incident, I can’t say that I was offended at all by any comments that my students made about “white people,” but if a white student had made a comment about black people, he would’ve had to haul ass to the assistant principal. (Hypothetically, that is – I didn’t actually have any white students.)
What, you might ask, is the difference?
To put it very simply, black people didn’t spend centuries oppressing white people, owning white slaves, selling white slaves, and raping and impregnating white people to make even more slaves.
To put it another way – what are some of the racist comments you hear white people say about black people? You’ve got the obnoxious comments from the white girl in Franchesca Ramsey’s video calling things “ghetto,” assuming all black people know each other, commenting on people who don’t act “stereotypically black” (implying that “stereotypically black” is bad). But you also have the more hateful comments that white people make about black people – that they’re dirty, or have nasty hair, or that they’re inherently lazy. Working at a school with mostly black students meant I heard these types of comments a lot – if not about the students themselves, then about their parents.
On the other hand, the comments my students would make about white people weren’t of the “ghetto” or “lazy” or “dirty” variety. If they talked about “white people” as a whole, they commented on the way white people treated them: white retail workers, white police offers, other white teachers, assuming they were ghetto or lazy or dirty, or thieves or violent or bad influences, simply because they were black.
In other words, the comments weren’t about disliking white people. They were about mistrusting white people – assuming that white people would assume the worst of them for being black. And this isn’t a mistrust based on negative white stereotypes they see on television or in the media. This is a mistrust based on real life experience, because they or everyone they knew had at least one experience of being a victim of racism. Even the anti-Semitic comment I mentioned about was focused on how my student believed Jewish people perceived him. (I am NOT condoning or excusing anti-Semitism here, just looking at my student’s way of thinking).
There’s an epilogue to this story.
After a few months of the school year, my students and I would start to become more comfortable with each other. We knew each other better and developed a rapport.
On more than one occasion, one of my students might make a comment about “white people” without the usual qualifier. I would jokingly point to myself and say, “Excuse me?” to which my student would wave hir hand dismissively and say, “You don’t count.”
“You don’t count as white.” Yet another comment that can be so loaded depending on the context.
If a white person says to a black person, “I don’t see you as black,” s/he is saying, essentially, “You’re not like those other black people – you know, the bad ones. You’re one of the good ones. Nice job!” or “I’m erasing an important part of you so I can make myself good about being liberal. BLAH BLAH COLORBLIND SOCIETY BLAH BLAH.”
That’s not what my students were saying to me. When they said they didn’t see me as white, it was a sign of trust. “You’re not like those other white people – you know, the ones who think the worst of us because we’re black.”
This isn’t to say that there are no black people who never make truly racist comments, or no white people who are sensitive to race issues. This isn’t to brag about how I was SUCH AN AWESOME TEACHER OMG!!! or to hold myself as a paragon of a Non-Racist White Person.
My only goal is to add to the dialogue and show how the same statement can be completely different when coming from different people. Context matters.
And if, after viewing “Shit White Girls Say About Black Girls,” reading Tami Winfrey Harris’s article, and reading this post, you still think that black people shouldn’t be making these “assumptions” about white people? Then be vocally anti-racist and give people a reason to trust you. Don’t complain that it isn’t fair that you don’t get to say the n-word. That’s not a privilege worth winning.
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