What Would You Do?
By kenya on Mar 30, 2010 in Social Commentary
1992: My boyfriend (at the time) and I were driving 200 miles from Washington, DC, to our hometown Chesapeake, Virginia, in the dead of winter. He didn’t have heat in his car so we stopped in Lightfoot, Virginia, for coffee to warm up. While we’re in a 7-Eleven, a white man came in and asked the cashier “Where’d them niggers come from?” The boyfriend and I looked at each other, not sure of what he had just heard. Being that we were in Lightfoot, Virginia, we finished adding our cream and sugar, paid for the coffee and got the heck out of there as fast as we could. In the car, we confirmed that we had heard the same thing.
Fast forward to 2010: Four black women (including myself) are in the historic U Street neighborhood in Washington, DC. We’re at Cafe Saint Ex‘s downstairs nightclub for a drink after a Tweetup. The DJ was all over the place with his music selections. He played Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman”; that led into Kanye West and Jamie Foxx’s Gold Digger, the explicit version. The group of us looked at each other cringing at what was about to happen. We were sitting there in a club full of mostly white Gen X’ers yelling “But she ain’t messin’ wit’ no broke niggas.” Um, okay.
Shannon went to talk to the DJ (who had already seen us there and he started bleeping out that N-word. By that time, however, Danielle was already being kicked out of the club for her method of protest. The rest of us finished our drinks and left.
Here’s what I want to know:
- What would you do in both situations mentioned above?
- Are these situations different?
- Does the fact that Kanye West is black make it okay for people to play/sing along?
1 Comment(s)
Re: the latter situation: I stopped dropping the n-bomb when I started hanging out in “mixed” company a few years back. In my opinion in 2010 it’s time for us to realize how ridiculous “I can say it but you can’t” sounds when you’re trying to explain it to other cultures. Similarly I would like us to be more responsible in the community image we put forth in music (Mr. West) and film (Mr. Perry) but unfortunately I don’t see that happening anytime soon. We’re Americans and ridiculousness sells.
As far as the former situation in VA, all I can say is that I’m a city boy, born and raised in an 85% Black city. Until I moved out here I didn’t realize how comforting it is to be surrounded by faces and stories with which one can connect, and not have to deal with the racism and xenophobia unless absolutely necessary. I said all THAT to say, what COULD you do in that situation? Make a fuss? Demand restitution? I just hope one day we get to a place where those types of attitudes don’t affect us the way they do now. You can call other ethnicities all the slurs in the book and at the end of the day they keep doing what they’re doing. With us, sometimes we still feel that lash.
I really didn’t mean to say this much, my bad. I haven’t slept.
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