Blackness is really not seen or treated like a culture or racial experience specific to a set of people (specifically Balck ppl im the hood) but as a common cultural space and social position worked by poor Black ppl that anyone can lean into or take from as they wish

NBPOC are quick to say “The world isn’t just Black and white!” But then remind us daily that even they recognize it is. They see this colonial binary and want to position themselves within it as “down”.

NBPOC lean or dip into ghettoness to express themselves as non-white, as down, as hard, as cultured, as sexual and sexy, in all these really fucked up hyper aggressive hypersexualized ways that colonizers painted Black people as, but don’t really actually fw us?

NBPOC rap artists use hip hop and rap to “Uplift” their people, “Raise political awareness” and “Decolonize” but do not center, uplift or ally themselves with Blackness at all. Not one collab or one peep of support.

Then they wonder why we take issue with their minstrelsy and appropriation, dispute what we see they’re communicating about how they view Blackness. They try to claim it’s All Respect, they Just Talk And Act Like That Because It’s How They Grew Up

At the same time, Blackness and Black culture is often a punching bag for their elders or their older “decolonial” types, and they are not NEARLY as loud in challenging them as they are explaining to us why they’re entitled to Black hood culture/identity

I can’t tell you how many clearly resentful and unsubtle memes around the lines of “Quit dressing like a no good culture-less thug with your pants down and hoodies and claim YOUR culture, act like a warrior” I have seen circulate around Native FB completely unchecked

And in general it’s just this joke among young NBPOC that with their friends or at the club they’re “hood rats” and they listen to Drake but around their elders they’re Good Obedient kids from their culture or whatever

When it is time to escape the bad parts of the binary, the criminal/negative associations with Blackness esp poor Black people in urban centers that comes with policing and carceral punishment, they’re quick to disavow Blackness and kick us to the curb

It gets tiring to be reminded over and over that they seen us only as a skin to wear when they want to show how spicy, angry or cool they are but they’re still good obedient cultured Asian Indigenous Arab NB Latinx etc kids when their elders or Police are watching.

Like if you feel you won’t be recognizable in whiteness unless you jock that’s a whiteness problem, it isn’t Black people’s fault. Upholding this system and engaging it then walking away from the ramifications is some bullshit

Black people esp poor Black people, dark skin people, gotta deal with being HYPERvisible no matter what they do or say. NBPOC leaning on that hypervisibility to work thru their identity crisis is some bullshit