Maybe You DO Talk White

Alia Parker

“We’ve done so much work as black people to beat into the public mind that,

like, there is no aesthetic to black people.”:

— @captainmooseknuckless on TikTok

I grew up in the DMV, one of the blackest places in America. But somehow I ended up playing college basketball in white ass Connecticut in 2017. A black girl from Boston, Grace, always reminded me of the black girls from Northern Virginia back home. Passive aggressive, pretentious and “proper” as hell. During BSU meetings she would reflect on her childhood and cousins from the hood in Boston that told her she “talked white.” They were right. She talk white as hell (at least she did back then, maybe she let that shit go). She acted white as hell too, which is why she didn’t last at BSU meetings long.

There’s this tik tok trend that has been reminding me a lot of Grace. Some black, masculine presenting lesbians have been asking people if they look like they date white women. And honestly, if you gotta ask then you already know the answer. But people have been indulging them. And this is really upsetting a certain demographic of people I refer to as the “non-black blacks”: Exhibit A.

I have been trying to figure out if the reason people have this reaction to conversations about black people having a preference for the black aesthetic is because they don’t think one exists. Either that, or they detest it. I’m still contemplating on this. It would make sense though that black people who grew up immersing themselves in white, American hegemonic culture would be mad as shit that people they find attractive vocalize their affinity for the things the culture they grew up trying to counter. Imagine critiquing black women for having a racial consciousness and thinking you're progressive because you're queer and your white woman is a Marxist.

The existence of black people that are so grossly uneducated on their own history, but arrogant enough to diagnose the black community with problems will never cease to amaze me.

Black culture in America is ontologically counter-cultural. So a bunch of black mascs wearing flannels and purposefully avoiding the use of the “habitual be” doesn’t make them “different”. Just an assimilationist stuck in the maze of internalized antiblackness.

The question always becomes, who do you want to be different from? And why? You don’t have to be a non-black black to be in the theater, see Juanita Hall and August Wilson. You don’t have to fall down a white hole because you like punk shit, s/o to Fishbone and DC’s Bad Brains. Your interests do not make you white, it’s actually the self-hate that your cousins, or women you find attractive are smelling on you.

That shit funky as a mf.

Black people are simply identifying the ways you (perhaps subconsciously, but I’m tired of y’all getting grace) position yourself in opposition to anything that sounds, looks or smells black.

However, I do listen to the people that call me the race police. They told me we gotta stop bullying the niggas who did the Naruto run down the hallway in school. No one has any authority to snatch black cards from any black person. But you niggas do talk white and we know you date white women so stop asking us.

Maybe You DO Talk White

Alia Parker

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