I Prefer Dealing With Subtle Racism Over Dealing With Other Black People.

I am an African-American who grew up with the stereotypical inner city ghetto childhood. To clarify, I am not suggesting that an impoverished or violent upbringing is the norm for black Americans, but I am saying that some people really do live the stereotype. Single mother on government assistance, violent peers, finding drugs as a child, seeing drug deals, seeing people mugged in the open, watching a man die after a weapons fight with a rival gang member, seeing the chalk outlines and blood stains of murder victims on several different occasions. That all happened to me.

My life was riddled with violence and the culture felt intrinsically aggressive. Just basic communication felt like walking on eggshells, because I never knew when someone would just get angry or pick a fight seemingly at random. It was made worse by the fact that I am by nature a soft-spoken and introverted person. I was a very polite kid who preferred reading to playing outside and had a natural urge to be kind. This painted a giant target on my back. All cultures bully people, and in such cases the quiet kid is generally the target. I felt like inner city black culture took it a step further by victim blaming; if you were getting “punked” it was your fault for being weak. It was a very dog-eat-dog mentality, where any act of kindness or softness was seen as “slipping”, and if you were caught slipping you deserved what you got.

By the time I got to high school, I was severely mentally ill and paranoid from both the constant abuse (from my family, community, and peers) and self-imposed isolation that I resorted to to try to protect myself from the abuse. I had developed a genuine, deep dislike of people in general, and other black people specifically. The loathing extended to myself. I hated being black because I saw black as inferior. I grew up in a community that was mostly black and Latino and my black peers just seemed genuinely dumber and far, far more aggressive than the Hispanic kids. If something got stolen, it was a black kid. Fight breaking out? 8/10 chance it’s some black kids. A giant ruckus, or someone screaming obscenities and threats, or destroying property just for fun, or ganging up to jump one person? The f****** black kids of course. Just want to listen to the teacher and get your work done? Well too bad, because the black kids have decided to dance on the table while beat boxing or rapping and threaten the teacher for havibg the audacity to tell them to sit down.

My self loathing progressed to the point where I cursed the black blood flowing through my veins. I am not 100% black (55% West African according to a recent

Ancestryy DNA test) and sometimes mourned the fact that my European blood was tainted with “subpar N**** blood”. Yeah, that was painful to write, and while I don’t believe that anymore, it was how I felt at the time. I felt that I was genetically just as much white as black, but the one drop rule cursed me to live a s***** life around s***** people who hated me and whom I had begun to hate in turn. And worse, even if I escaped the dregs of black violence and stupidity, I’d be treated like crap by all other ethnic groups for being just another n-word.

When I did hang around people, I chose the Latinos; I was viewed as odd and felt like an outsider no matter which group I was around, but around the Latino kids I at least felt *safe*. Plus, they seemed to like the fact that I was smart and could help them with homework. The black kids viewed my academic achievements as me thinking I was better than them, and responded with aggression and ostracization.

Even though I lived in the inner city, I chose to go to a high school that was an hour and a half drive away in a mostly white area. When asked why I would choose to make my life so much harder, I shrugged and said the school had better academics and I wanted to go to a good college. While that was true (“better academics” was a low bar when the control is s***** school where 50% don’t even graduate and actual gang murders have happened on campus), the true reason is that it sounded like a place with very few black people. It was. My high school years weren’t rainbows and sunshine; I was pretty messed up from the constant abuse and violence, so I was known as the weird kid. Well, the *smart* weird kid. And while it did hurt more than my ego would allow me to admit to have no friends, for the first time I felt like I could breathe a sigh of relief. Yeah, the white and Asian kids might largely ignore me, not let me in their cliques and talk s*** about me, but no one was actively seeking to physically harm me. This was a HUGE win for me. I was still miserable as a person and in dire need of mental health treatment, but at least felt somewhat safe.

I did achieve my goal of getting into a good college, where the black student population was less than 6%. It was here where I encountered a lot of blatant, dignity crushing racism. Ruminating on this one day I had a sickening realization: I could always transfer to an HBC (Historically Black College) but never would, not only because I refused to give up a seat at a top tier university, but because I preferred dealing with racism from my white and Asian peers over just dealing with other black people in general. It was a sobering realization for me, and did not help my already terrible and rapidly fading mental health.

Fast forward some years. College is done, even got some grad school in. Finally got much needed mental health treatment, but the real help was Prozac and being out of stressful environments. Career established. Got married, bought a house, got a sports car, am considered hot s*** at work where I am making a six figure salary. Weekends are spent dining out at fancy restaurants. Spouse and I own property, are theatre season pass holders, host wine parties, and travel internationally every year. Life is good. After so many years of being in a more positive environment, and developing healthy relationships, plus a s***-ton of Prozac and CBT, I feel like I’ve finally left all of that self loathing behind me. I refuse to straighten my hair, and educate myself on black history. I become a veritable encyclopedia of black southern folklore, and develop a healthy self image. And yet…

In my safe, happy affluent life, there are very few other black people. Black neighbors? Can count ’em on one hand. Black co-workers? Minimal. Black friends? I have none. Not even black music or popular culture permeates my life. I thought I had gotten over my issues, but one day I took an objective look at my life and realized that I had scrubbed any trace of blackness out of it, save for the more antiseptic academic aspects, such as studying black history. On the average day, I don’t interact with a single black person. To my horror I found that my internal response to this was, “Good! it’s why your life is so happy now”.

I realize that I get a sense of annoyance and inevitability when I know I am going outside a large, diverse city into a majority white area, because I know the subtle racism will be coming. My white spouse and I will get stares and even whispers (yes, this s***, even in this day and age). I will be complimented for being “articulate”–when I am not being followed around a store or having middle aged white women side eye me uncomfortably when near them. There is a chance that when I am with my spouse the people serving us will ignore me while white men will gape in bewilderment that a fellow white man would marry black woman. These tiny little indignities hurt, but not as much as it hurts me to realize that I still find this preferable to interacting with other black people.

I noticed that for every interaction with a black person I don’t know, especially a black woman, I am holding my breath, subconsciously waiting for the “attitude problem” to happen. While I am polite, I am also internally always on edge, waiting to see what insane drama the interaction will bring. And then comes the shame, because these days most of my interactions with other black people are as pleasant as they are with any person. Except when they’re not. There’s always that one loud, abrasive, neck swiveling drama queen, waiting to tear into me because I “talk white”, or act like I am better than them (according to them), or looked at them the wrong way, or inconvenienced them in some way or was “disrespectful” (i.e. disagreed politely or…just existed). In my youth, it felt like these sort of encounters made up half or more of my interactions. Now, they’re so few, even among other blacks. But the pain remains, and when it does happen it’s always a trigger a flood of anger, fear, panic, and sheer disgust.

I’ve been around blacks of Caribbean, West African, and Eastern African origin, and don’t feel these emotions or worries at all with them, but don’t think I’ll ever truly feel comfortable around other black Americans.