Written for and orig. published on Intersection of Madness and Reality
Last week, the #BlackPrivilege hash-tag gained momentum on Twitter, reportedly created as a response to the discovery of a (neglected?) tumblr blog and, perhaps, just being plain tired of having to ward off cries of "reverse-racism" whenever black people speak out loud about the lived experiences and daily microaggressions many of us have to navigate . “This Is Black Privilege” ... an anonymous tumblr blog comprised of a jumble of murky, awkwardly written non-facts that seem as if they were culled from the library stacks of Ignoramus University.
According to the answers for a set of Frequently Asked Questions, This is Black Privilege’s purpose is to “educate the uneducated” by way of “a compilation of black people privileges." According to the person behind the blog— a self-described nice, white 22-year-old "fairly well-known blogger", whose experience with dissecting race is purportedly relegated to: having grown up with blacks in Alabama listening to Hip-Hop, having black boyfriends up until the age of 18, having taken a smattering of classes in the psychology of racism, African and basic history, and anthropology—, black is “more prevalent than [you] think.” And “there are a lot of examples to back up and clarify this if [you] need it.” S/He also challenges, “If you’d like to refute each and every one of them, you’re welcome to try.”
However, none of the examples of 'black privilege' this person presents seem to be rooted in any actual facts. They seem more in line with the regurgitated donkey doo-doo one hears from Stormfront’s White Nationalist Community, pseudo-social science, or your standard Fox News broadcast. When challenged (repeatedly) to cite his/her sources for a lot of the asinine posts shared on the blog, the admin only offered a vague “sorry, I don’t have time to cite every source” response, but credited the black women’s lifestyle and gossip site Madame Noire, as a prime example of “black privilege” and as the catalyst for the conception blog … because g-d forbid if black folks have the unmitigated gall to start their own media infrastructures and employ black freelance writers. How terribly… elitist and short-sighted of us to resource hoard, right?
Black privilege is expecting compensation for slavery from all whites, and it’s also ignorance about other types of slavery in the U.S.
(…)Slavery of blacks was ended a long while before white child slavery was ended. The children would be worked 16 hours a day, without food, and would be beaten/mutilated. Also, slaves of color were more valued than poor white men.
--Yes, because indentured servitude and serfdom is definitely the same as forced migration from the only home you know, chained, and packed at the bottom of a ship for grueling, seemingly endless, days like sardines; headed towards an unfamiliar destination only to be auctioned off, separated from your children, and sold into chattel slavery to work under brutal conditions for zero pay… and then raped, cuckolded, and murdered because you’re black and only 3/5ths of a human being. While child labor and the military use of children is a relevant human rights violation, this strikes me as a sloppy attempt to try to juxtapose the two issues against each other. So, bye.
(…) Slaves of color viewed themselves as better than poor whites because their masters did, too. Poor whites would have to take back entrances into houses while slaves didn't. Dust Bowl forced penniless white Oklahoma immigrants west.
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| I've been at the receiving end of ALL of this |
Needless to say, not sure if ‘This Is Black Privilege’ was nothing more than trolling as a vehicle to complain about black people supposedly whining, by … well… whining about perceived threats to white imperialism; but ‘Black Twitter’ unleashed with a series of some of the cleverest, oh-so-real comebacks and dissections of race politics, in a purgative moment that resonated on a global scale.
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