Anti-blackness is normalized

I'm sick and tired of it

Hiii, it’s time for the weekly delight! On this weekly delight I’m sharing thoughts that flooded my mind as I waited in line at walgreens, a poem, and photos I took.

Also, my monthly comedy show is in Brooklyn tomorrow at Friends and Lovers at 8pm! Come!

Onto the delights…

Thoughts on the normalization of anti-Blackness

Earlier this week I stood in line in my neighborhood walgreens, holding the toilet paper I wanted to purchase. We were on our last roll, or so I thought. The line was long, there was only one person at the register. The event of too many people in line and one cashier is the standard operating procedure at this walgreens. Sometimes I wonder why they have more than one register. It’s as if they are trying to mock us. Those registers say, “Oh, we know we need more people to work the register so you don’t have to wait in line for 4 hours, but we won’t do it because you are Black and we don’t care.”

Yes, my walgreens is in a Black neighborhood and it gets the treatment Black customers get, discomfort and negligence. No, I haven't done a study on all walgreens and ran a regression model to determine whether the number of registers open and the proportion of Black people are negatively correlated, but I do have eyes. When I go to walgreens with less melanin, alas, there are multiple cashiers!

As I waited in line, my usual rage of being expected to withstand terrible treatment bubbled. I thought about how anti-Blackness is normalized to the point where it’s viewed as “well that’s just the way things are”. The idea that every Black person knows they need to work five times harder to get a job, then when they get the job, people scream out DEI is wild to me. I have worked with white people who if I was as bad at their job as they were I would never get a job. I have to be perfect at all times, meanwhile Jane gets multiple chances to be terrible.

The expectation of perfection from Black people while we are treated as second class citizens is abhorrent, which is why I spend a lot of my time being imperfect and messy these days. I spent a lot of my life buying into the idea of Black excellence. Thinking if I spent all my time being as smart as possible, then the rules of racism wouldn’t apply to me.

As I have started decolonizing my mind I understand that the reason why perfection and obedience is required from Black people is because Black people should rebel. Black people should wake up every morning and raise a middle finger to a system that exploits their bodies for profit while discarding their basic needs. In order for the system to feel safe while oppressing Black people it has to push the notion of Black excellence. The notion that your compliance and obedience will save you while you are being actively attacked.

When I finally paid for my toilet paper and got home I found out that my husband had already bought toilet paper! So I guess I didn’t have to suffer in line to have all these thoughts, but I’m glad I did.

The poem

I wrote this poem a long time ago but I’ve been too scared to share it. It’s called “existing” which is something I wish they would just let us do. Onto the poem…