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I Can Only Get to First Base With White Women
Too often white women friends cling to an image of perfection. Their racism shatters that image, and they can’t face it.
I joked in a comment on someone’s Medium story that I can only get to first base in my friendships with white women. The more I think about it, the less funny it is, though. Rachel Ricketts summed it up perfectly.
“…no one has caused me more harm in my life than white women+. The fragility and victimhood mixed with pervasive bypassing, defense mechanisms, and emotional violence make for a special sauce of racist venom” (p. 16).
Getting past first base means sharing my experiences about racism, and when, not if they say or do racist things, we can talk it through. Unfortunately, when I try, they drop it like a bag of hot Scheiße or throw it back in my face. They basically don’t want anything to do with it.
Knowing that we both have “raced” experiences is unbearable, and they detest that I bring it up. But how can we develop a friendship while denying who we are?
This is why I was on the verge of a 192-page panic attack while reading White Fragility. It was all too disturbing, real, and terrifying. This white woman was “singing my life with her words.”
