There is no reason AWG Bill and all the other AWGs have to read what you write. If they don’t want to know your opinions then all they need to do is move it along, plenty of room on the internet for everyone. The need to interject all the special snowflake hurt feelings against anyone who doesn’t conform to what the cumulative AWG wants to see has become grotesque to the point of absurdity. I’d like to blame the internet, but it’s always been like that, it’s just now you see a world of it rather than just the shit that goes down in the place you happen to live.

I’m a moving-into-my-sixties queer white person. While I never thought of myself as racist, it’s because of the internet giving voices like yours a platform to be heard that I started to learn how many things I assumed about racism and about myself were not true things. I couldn’t assume that because as a queer person who’d had struggles, some violence and a lot of anger pointed in my direction didn’t mean I had an inside line on what African-Americans in this country deal with on a continual basis.

I began to see that I was and am racist as fuck and that realizing that stung pretty bad; no one likes to think of themselves as having such an ugly seam running through them. Listening to people relate their experiences and their feelings is hard, especially when it’s thrown all your assumptions out the window. It’s hard, but it’s good, too, because understanding one another is part of a process. I found out that once I’d passed the point of not feeling butthurt for just because I never burned crosses on the front lawns of the black people I live near, was actually learning something. Imagine that!

White privilege, micro-aggressions, white feminism v. black feminism. Life’s not a Coke commercial and the little lies built up over not looking honestly at things over a lifetime become oddly concrete truths because it’s just easier that way. It’s a piss poor excuse, really. I wish I’d known it sooner.

I started following you here last week after reading about your experiences being a metalhead black woman. It caught my eye because damn if it’s not tough enough being a white female fan who loves the music. I don’t hit shows much these days, but back when I still did it could get scary and often dangerous. I lost a couple teeth at a Slayer show and was lucky that was all that happened. I think about it now sometimes and sort of shudder at some of the things that happened to me and my friends all because we had the nerve to crash the (white/het) boys club. Your post about it brought a lot of these things back to mind.

I will continue being Black As Fuck and writing about it and living it.

Glad to hear that and, oh, I love the pic of you being terribly black in public!