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Oof. What a day.
I believe there is merit to policing an identity, that is absolutely necessary for the material, mental, and spiritual well-being of a marginalized people—of their most marginalized.
I believe there is merit to policing an identity, that is absolutely necessary for the material, mental, and spiritual well-being of a marginalized people—of their most marginalized.
However, I have seen first-hand how arbitrary that can be and how it has been weaponized against people from other ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and whether or not those doing the policing like you or are friends with you.
I've seen people take away Blackness and Brownness from people because those people don't fully embrace their negritude or indigeneity (to their liking) as if that's not part of the plan white supremacy concocted, forced on us just so we can survive, as if we don't all...
to different degrees, distance ourselves from them one way or another, consciously or subconsciously. I've seen people writing scathing epistles about someone, denying them of their Blackness or Brownness and within the same breath, giving it to someone else based on...
a nationality or proximity to them, for instance, even though they might have the same arbitrary phenotypes, the same skin color as those they're taking it away from. There are people who police maliciously, who are toxic, who void people's real, material experiences...
To make things more bizarre, I've seen light skin people doing this to other light skin people, people who are just about the same color as them—give or take away a shade.
I keep thinking that their eyes are failing them or their brains are literally projecting a blackness that exists or doesn't exist in others. It's a strange thing to see, to experience, to live. And I don't know one person who hasn't been guilty of it. Many things are true:
1) There are white people, of different ethnicities and nationalities, who are pretending to be something they are not. Hispanidad and Latinidad (in Latin America and in the States), as many writers and advocates have said before, are filled to the brim with them.
2) There are light skin people who may or may not be able to pass for white, obviously.
3) Race is a social construct, most of us know this. Racism and colorism are real. And race science is a myth, but popular discourse about identity never seems to fail to not fall into its traps.
