Fee-shaming Obama into a corner

Dis a funny country!
How so?
Well, every chance you get, you disrespect the negro.

A twelve year old boy gets shot by the police and y’all blame the boy, his mama, his daddy, his sister, his community, but never the incompetent and unfit  White cop who shot him. When the Grand Jury refuses to indict and the city pays a multi-million dollar settlement to the family, the police union president tells the family they should spend the money educating other negroes how not to be 12 year old police murder victims. Ain’t that funny?

Dis a funny country!
How so?
Well, every former president joins the Speaker's Bureau and gets on the speaking circuit. They all parlay their administrative and executive leadership experience into an income. Bill did it. Dubya did it. St. Ronnie did it. This is your capitalism on fleek, cuz these folks be making serious bank. But somehow, some way, when Brother Obama seeks to do it, suddenly, errbody's verklempt and clutching their pearls. Folk want him to do it for free because apparently he’s supposed to be above the vulgarity that is a pay check. Now ain’t that funny?

Dis a funny country!
How so?

Well, POC still can’t get equal treatment in either a court of law or the court of public opinion. Black baby boys can’t walk the streets in safety. We still have to work twice as hard to get half as much. And now, it looks like even half is too big a fraction. Now, y’all want a grown Black man to work twice as hard for free.

Rather than lean unto your own integrity, rather than develop your own moral compass, you want to copy Obama’s? And to facilitate you, to be worthy of copying, he must forgo post-presidency earnings (from certain quarters, which quarters will be defined by you, of course) so that you can “have someone to look up to?”

It’s not enough that he’s not taken bribes.

It’s not enough that his was the FIRST administration in 30 some years to end without a single indictment or imprisonment.

It’s not enough that his administration was largely scandal free (never mind BENGHAZI! and THE TALKING POINTS!).

No! None of that is quite enough. Now, he must take a vow of perpetually saying no to invitations you deem unseemly, to prove his decency bona fides.

Ladies and gentlemen, this right here is the definition of alabaster bullshit©. (Not my term and I promised my friend I'd use the © sign when I used it publicly. )

Tell me, y’all don’t get tired policing Blackness? Cuz this sho’ nuff feels like that’s what this is.

Y’all established your capitalist system, and have frustrated the progress of people who look like Barack H. Obama in every way you could. When we adapted and found ways, you put up a new blocks. You conducted pogroms, drew red lines, and generally mistreated us any time you had half a chance. And still, when, God forbid, one of us manages to cross the finish line, you lose your damn minds.

Truly, there’s nothing that pisses you off more than us making a way out of no way. There’s nothing that upsets y’all more than a Black man or woman playing on the field you laid, and winning. You hate it. And the minute it happens, you rush to adjust the rules, so you can make sure our first place finish is actually a distant second. To you. Again.

At the end of the day and in every way that matters, you still see us – including BHO – as ‘boy’, and you still see yourself as entitled to our uncompensated labor, whether it be physical, intellectual, or emotional.

In the same way that the Cleveland Police Union president tried to shame Samaria Rice into spending the city of Cleveland’s blood money (to which she was entirely entitled, and which, I feel compelled to point out, didn’t bring her dead son back) doing what the city of Cleveland should be doing, so too do you want to shame Barack Obama into working for free (you know what that’s called right?) so as to model integrity for you. Lord that is laughable.

You want a moral leader? Here’s a hint: buy a mirror (available at Pottery Barn). Look into it. See one there? Lead your damn self and keep your policing of Blackness to a minimum. If you can. 

Rachel Dolezal: Columbusing Blackness

For a few weeks now, I’ve been trying to write something about the colonizer mentality (aka ytppul ytppuling) but the words have been slow to come. The idea remained unclear until Rachel Dolezal’s latest interview with Ijeoma Oluo appeared in The Stranger. (here) Suddenly, it all came together because Rachel being Rachel, her offerings opened new mental vistas for me. Rachel, I thank you.

When I write in strong terms about the 'performance of Whiteness' in (mostly, but not exclusively) American society, I do so knowing that I have White friends who may take offense at my generalization. I understand the offense you take but I cannot apologize for it. I’m drawing a conclusion from the evidence left by hundreds of years of behavior by millions of people. I don’t even know if it’s a generalization per se or just the drawing the obvious conclusions.

The inclination towards supremacy, towards reaping where one has not planted, is what I refer to as ytppul ytppuling (YY) or the colonizer mindset. YY is Whiteness moving in the world in the way it best knows how: taking the path of least resistance, typically right through someone else's most sacred of spaces, directly to its destination. Like marauding ants through your vegetable patch, yytppuling steals your blooms, your leaves, and ultimately, your entire garden. Call it the colonizer mindset at work if that language makes you more comfortable, same difference really.

YtppuI ytppuling is, to my mind, the perfect explanation for the phenomenon that is Rachel Dolezal. I hadn’t intended ever to speak on her, but she’s come back again, this time with a new book, justisplainin’ her Columbusing of Blackness. She wandered barefoot and unwelcome, with her braids, her tan and her new African name, right into the middle of my crisis of trying to explain ytppul ytppuling, essentially offering herself as a living visual aid. Thanks. I think.

Dolezal is a helluva character. My belief is that she has read just enough history to understand and appreciate the triumphs of Blackness, and out of an abundance of admiration, and perhaps a surfeit of jealousy, she has decided that she wants to be Black. Hey, I get it. I wanna be Black too…..oh wait.

I wish I could say that I sympathize with Dolezal but in truth, I don't.

Rachel is the worst kind of fraudulent operator to me. She is not Black. This is not up for debate to my mind. She. Is. Not. Black. What she is, is a thief. She has co-opted Blackness for its apparent (cultural) benefits and sexy cool points, while wholly sidestepping its social, economic, and legal burdens. Worse still, she traffics in within-race colorism on the sly. She knows enough to understand that if folk think she’s Black, she’ll receive the deferential treatment that Black folk often mete out to light skinned women of color. She’s been known to talk about colorism, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that she meant to tap into Black people's own strain of anti-Blackness. She may wanna be Black but she ain’t wanna be no midnight Black. Nuh uh, she wanna be Becky with the good hair!

And when she experiences disapprobation and rejection – not on account of being Black but rather on account of the obscenity of her actions – she turns around and claims discrimination. Jumping Jehoshapat, where to start?

Worse still than the absolute asshattery of her explanations of her Blackness, her position creates a universe wherein Blackness isn't real; it's just some accessory that one can don or doff at will. Or at least, she can. Black folk can’t take theirs off but that is of no consequence.

This whole episode is just more Darth Becky on steroids shit - White privilege, White cultural appropriation, ytppul ytppuling (aka colonizer mindset) bull shiggety: #ColonizerMindsetHardAtWork. 

TheRoot.com: Three Darth Beckys all in a row

Rachel, from her clearly superior colonizer perspective, can decide to be Black and affect the pose; she can claim the benefits while escaping the challenges. As a White woman, she demanded inclusion (suing Howard University for exclusion on the grounds of race) and then when that failed, she masqueraded her way into inclusion. And she could do it all with a straight face, because whyever not?

In every way, Rachel’s story is the colonizer story: “Mine eye doth perceive it, mine heart doth want it, I therefore must have it.” Rachel wants Blackness and voilà, it is hers. The colonizer does whatever he/she must to have whatever her greedy little heart desires because it is all hers for the taking. She needs no permission and Lawd knows she will not tolerate your challenges to her logic, her excuses or her justisplanations!!

Darth Becky can center her White self even in the universe of Blackness because Whiteness is the center of the known universe. The world is Becky’s oyster and the Beckster is taking all the damn pearls. Deal with it.

The colonizer mindset, ytppul ytppuling, it’s a thing, a real thing. Rachel Dolezal is proof of that because there she is, reaping where she certainly has not sowed. This ladies & gents, is Rachel Columbusing Blackness, taking up where the original colonizer left off.