7 Things white people shouldn’t say during Black History Month (to avoid catching hands)
Don't catch a beat-down in February
To be Black in America is to endure all the aggressions – micro, macro, and thermonuclear – on a daily basis. It’s the cross we’re forced to bear to have immaculate rhythm and look good in colored suits.
Thing is, someone decided many moons ago that we’d spend one month out of every year honoring Blackness through respect, appreciation, historical reflection, well-cooked seafood jambalaya and, this year, making fun of Tom Brady’s MAGA-ass for losing the Super Bowl. It’s the one month where being at the wrong end of those aggressions might get you socked in the mouth.
— Texas teacher wears same hairstyle as her student to prove to her she’s beautiful —
One could argue that the current Black History Month is more poignant than ever, one year into a presidential administration that nakedly abides and feeds into racism; and just six months after a bunch of virginal white boys left their mama’s basement and took up tiki torches in one of the most publicized and organized displays of contemporary racism on American soil. Our nerves are raw, so white folks saying the wrong thing between now and March 1 might cause us to channel the spirits of the ancients and Chadwick Boseman to respond in a manner that might catch us a case.
White folks, take heed: here are seven things you shouldn’t say this month in order to avoid winding up on that Summer Jam screen:
— Black Twitter roasts TODAY show for Queen Nefertiti reconstruction that looks like a white woman —
Quincy Jones shouldn’t be saying all of that stuff!
Papa Quincy is one of the smoothest brothas to ever be wrapped in black skin. He’s such a legend, he helped create legends. Now, at almost 85, he’s insanely rich, completely bereft of damns to give and willing to spill enough tea to make the Sons of Liberty blush. If he wants to lower the veil and tell the world that the Beatles are insanely overrated, that’s his black-ass business. And since he’s probably forgotten more about music than most of us will ever learn, I believe what the man has to say.
— Justin Timberlake wrote a new song about me, and I’m not impressed —
Well, there ARE good people on both sides of these things, even Charlottesville
Anyone fixing their mouth to suggest that we should’ve simply allowed a gaggle of sexually-deprived Nazis to exercise their constitutional right to “gather peacefully” should be clocked in it. We sit by quietly and politely during Aunt Polly’s Thanksgiving dinner-table diatribe about why we should just ignore people and they’ll go away, but that’s not gonna happen when white folks are openly protesting your right to exist.
Black Panther wasn’t as good as (insert any movie)
Look, the quality of Black Panther as a movie, or even as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, doesn’t matter right now. I’m sure many of us are quietly hoping it doesn’t suck and also very much looking forward to the next Star Wars movie. But this ain’t the time to inject your Anglo opinions on the biggest Black event since Nov. 6, 2008. We’re setting records to roll out to the cinema mob deep in a couple weeks, and the opinions of the cold-comb contingent are absolutely unwelcome.
You were 36 seconds late for work
We’ve all had that boss who was such a hardcore micro-manager that he might as well have his hand buried in your behind like a Muppet. But just this month, you have to let those few seconds ride, white folks. Look at it as the flip-side of the “Black tax,” the notion that Black people have to work at least twice as hard to reap the same benefits as mediocre white folks. “Yo, I know I was late, fam. You ain’t gotta remind me.” Black people will be able to mosey on into work
But…does racism really exist in America anymore?
This is one of those things that your white husband Tristan will catch you off-guard with as you lay in bed together at some point between vanilla missionary sex and his finishing a chapter of his Lee Childs novel. His query will indicate how he really feels about your suggestion that the wealth and achievement gaps in America are strictly a result of our failure to pull up those blasted bootstraps. But, in the immortal words of Marcus Burnett from Bad Boys: “This ain’t the time.” In February, even the swirl babies y’all made together won’t keep you from getting that hot bowl of grits in the lap, Al Green-style.
Why is there no White History Month?
That’s an actual example from the salty white tears that were shed on my Facebook page just 24 hours ago. Maybe at any point between March 1 and Jan. 31 (i.e. the successive White History Months), I might be willing to kick off a Racism 101 course and explain exactly why it’s not the same when I say something that you consider racially insensitive. But in February, if you don’t catch these hands, you’ll catch a “block” at the very least.
I would’ve voted for Obama for a third term
You already know. Immediate hands.
Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. Miraculously, people have paid him to be aggressively light-skinned via a computer keyboard for nearly two decades. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at his own site, wafflecolored.com.
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