Not Walking Back

I have a bad habit of reworking things I’ve written over and over again when it’s not even that serious because I’m particular about language – and the way I feel about the language I use shifts like the wind for any number of reasons.

Sometimes, I think I could clarify something better. Sometimes, I think something could sound a bit more poetic or have a better rhythm to it. Sometimes, I think something should be shorter or longer. Sometimes, I want to use a particular word or reference something I didn’t reference before. Sometimes, I want to change the tone or theme.

Shit – sometimes, I just don’t like the way a paragraph looks.

Point?

With the internet and social media being ever present and ever significant these days, we’ve become a culture of people scrutinizing every little thing someone posts anywhere they post it whenever they posted it, trying to interpret it as we see fit.

And we’ve gotten used to people deleting or walking back things they wrote in response to the backlash they received for it – which also becomes an object of scrutiny.

Given my addiction to editing posts for what may, at times, seem like no reason at all or my frequent urge to purge that results in me deleting a ton of shit out of the blue, I can easily see people accusing me of walking things back or hiding things in reaction to some external force.

So I want it on record that I never edit my posts over feedback I receive. Any changes I make are because I went back to something I wrote, read it, and said, “Ew.” I’ve now saved you the trouble of trying to make it mean something it doesn’t.

You’re welcome.

The Willful Woe

Years ago, there was a movie called The Players Club written and directed by Ice Cube. It followed a woman’s account of her time as a stripper, and while it wasn’t a memorable film on the whole, there was one scene that stuck with me. If you’ve seen the movie, you likely know which scene it is.

First, I want to touch on an earlier scene for context.

Reggie – played by Ice Cube – and his buddy Clyde are at the club with a stripper named Ebony, who they think they can have sex with – either for money or for free. She’s too drunk to stand let alone consent to sex, but they take her out of the club and pull her down the street.

Clyde jokes about “running a train” on her and Reggie tries to quiet him as he doesn’t want to draw attention.

They reach the car and throw Ebony in. Thankfully, Ebony’s cousin, Diamond, shows up and tells Ebony to get out of the car because “Reggie and Clyde will rape her”. Reggie and Clyde protest, remarking that no one is going to get raped, Diamond is stuck-up, etc.

Ebony says it’ll be okay but Diamond won’t relent, so Ebony finally agrees to leave, which upsets Reggie and Clyde. Diamond tells the guys to let Ebony out of the car before she calls the cops. They comply, calling Diamond and Ebony names before driving off.

Ebony mistakingly believed Reggie and Clyde only wanted her to dance for them. Diamond, familiar with their circle – even having been sexually assaulted by their acquaintance, a fellow stripper named Ronnie – knew better.

Here’s that scene if you want a look:

The main scene in question takes place later at a bachelor party being thrown by Ronnie for her brother Junior. Not wanting her friends to strip for the questionable assortment of men, Ronnie tricks Ebony into going, giving her the impression that there will be other strippers too.

When Ebony realizes she’s the only one, she gets worried and calls Diamond to pick her up. Diamond, however, takes her sweet time since they aren’t on great terms by that point.

Meanwhile, Reggie, who is at the party, is still upset that Diamond got in the way of he and Clyde’s “fun” and that Ebony went along with rejecting them, maybe even insulting them at some point we didn’t see, so he decides to get back at them.

While Ebony is alone in the bedroom reluctantly getting ready to strip, Reggie tells Clyde to take Ronnie outside. He then tells Junior to have sex with Ebony, lying about how she’s easy and willing, that he and Clyde ran a train on her, and giving Junior a condom to use.

Convinced, Junior enters the bedroom to find Ebony half naked and scared, clutching her chest. She tells him she’ll be ready to strip outside in a minute, but he remarks that the real party is in there.

Realizing his intentions, Ebony makes it clear that she’s not there to have sex, she’s only there to dance, to which Junior locks the door and replies, “Then let’s dance.”

What follows is a shot of Reggie and the other “men” standing outside the door listening as Junior brutally beats and rapes Ebony. Sickened by what they hear – though not enough to intervene, apparently – the men slowly start to exit.

Unaffected, Reggie eyes the men funneling out of the room as if he doesn’t understand why they’re put off. Ronnie and Clyde return just as they’re exiting and Ronnie asks where Ebony is.

Reggie says, “Ask Junior”, following it with a quote that perfectly punctuates the brutality of the scene. “Oh yeah. Tell Ebony we understand. No do mean no.”

You can watch this scene as well and keep in mind that while it doesn’t show the sexual assault, hearing it may still be upsetting:

By the way, for anyone wondering why I bothered to describe the scenes if I was going to post links to them, it’s because users sometimes take videos down and not everyone will watch them anyway.

Now on to the meat and potatoes of this post.
Why did this scene bother me so much?

Two reasons.

The first is obviously the violent rape, but the second and most important is the fact that Reggie sent Junior in there knowing what would happen all because he was pissed he didn’t get a little ass and his ego was hurt.

Of course, he didn’t know exactly how things would end up. He wasn’t clairvoyant. But he did know Junior was unstable with a history of violence, so it was likely that sicking him on an unwilling female participant in that context would have predictably violent consequences.

You would assume that’s a no-brainer, but there are people out there who somehow think Reggie wasn’t setting Ebony up to get attacked and that he was as unnerved by it as the other men in the room despite being the last to leave and his heartless callback to being cock blocked by referencing that no does mean no.

Regardless, this post isn’t about The Players Club.
It’s about the Trump administration.

I know, I know. You’re like, “Whuuuuut?”

But this is what I do. I tell stories. I draw parallels. And I do that because more often than not, people have difficulty accepting information or understanding different perspectives due to bias specific to that subject.

Changing the subject removes that bias from the equation, allowing people to think more freely and critically – and when you ultimately bring it back to the real matter at hand, they will have hopefully retained a bit of what they learned from the parallel you drew.

So what’s on my mind?

Well – when questionable policies proposed by the Trump administration are announced or when members of the administration say sketchy things that relate back to the direction they’d like the country to go in, it’s become common for people who aren’t keen on Trump to claim that this administration is trying to dismantle America from the inside out.

It’s a pretty bold accusation – that the folks in power are willfully trying to destroy our country. But when you consider the kind of shit that’s happened throughout human history, it isn’t exactly implausible. Moreover, I can see how some concerned Americans would get that impression.

Look at people like Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, and Scott Pruitt – the Secretary of Education, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency respectively.

Not one of them appears to be qualified to hold their position. It could even be argued that they’re the exact opposite of qualified – like appointing a pedophile as the Director of Children’s Safety or making someone who believes there’s nothing in your closet the President of whatever’s in your closet.

And it’s so obvious how mismatched they are – not only in respect to their (lack of) relevant qualifications but also when comparing the intended functions of their departments to their personal opinions and political history – that you can’t help but think their misaligned appointments were intentional.

Because no one in their right mind would think they’re great candidates unless the whole point is for them to be bad ones. Just like no one in their right mind would send a violent sex offender into a bedroom to sleep with a girl who doesn’t consent unless the whole point is for her to get raped.

In case that parallel went over your head, one could say that America is Ebony, naked and bare, fearful of its future, desperately clutching its dignity, only to have Trump usher a shitload of Juniors into the room. The only question is why?

We know why Reggie did it.
Why did Trump?

I ask because let’s assume for a moment that those who believe this administration wants to tear our country down are right. That the government is trying to get America to cannibalize itself socially while methodically dismantling the foundations of a thriving nation – healthcare, education, infrastructure, economy, civil rights, environmental safety, et cetera – under the guise of improving those things.

What’s the endgame?

Growing up, I’d look at the villains in movies and comic books whose goal was to destroy the world and I’d think, who the hell wants to rule over a decimated wasteland full of suffering citizens? I’d rather rule over a world that’s powerful and prosperous because I’d be powerful and prosperous by extension. I’d reap all the benefits it sowed.

Then I realized it’s a matter of necessity. Few if any villains enjoy the idea of presiding over a crumbling society. They just recognize that a crumbling society is easier to rule.

People busy fighting for food, fighting for medicine, fighting for shelter, fighting for work, fighting for rights, fighting each other, won’t be fighting their oppressors any time soon. Even if they wanted to, they wouldn’t have the means to do it. Not the resources, not the knowledge, not the strength.

And it’s not like those villains are forced to endure the misery themselves. They don’t live in that wasteland. They don’t even have to look at it if they don’t want to. They always have some fancy fortress or mansion on a hill or walled-in city or some other place cut off from the despair around them.

They have their education, infrastructure, wealth, food, freedom, and health. Taking those things from everyone else is a small price to pay for control because it isn’t a price they’re paying anyway.

It’s the victims footing the bill.

When’s the last time you came across a villain who was fine sacrificing themselves and all of their creature comforts to see their evil done? Someone willing to suffer for their power in the way that some suffer for their art? It’s a red flag, you know. Policies that don’t negatively affect the ones making them.

Maybe the endgame is unchecked authority.
Maybe the endgame is unfettered wealth.
Maybe the endgame is unending war.

Who knows.

Regardless, I understand there are Americans who think the Trump administration is doing a bang up job and I’m not here to argue with them. This isn’t about them.

It’s about the worry many Americans have that the decisions being made aren’t being made in ignorance. That those in power know exactly what will happen to those who aren’t because they’ve designed it that way.

That the increasing struggles of the middle class and the ever present crushing of the lower aren’t unintended side effects. That the in-fighting and the fear mongering and the division and distractions are strategic.

That making people responsible for government agencies they can only, by nature, ruin, is simply another way to destabilize the power of those agencies while simultaneously abusing it.

And that they’ll continue down this path of cutting off America’s nose to spite its face despite protest from millions of Americans who don’t want to be screwed by the upper crust because our leaders understand no means no.

They just don’t care.

 

 

What is In Reply?

Back when I ran a popular commentary blog on Tumblr – we’re talking years ago before I realized I despise the internet – I used to do this thing called In Reply where I’d write a post in direct response to something specific, be it an article, a statement someone made online, or a message I personally received.

I enjoyed it because it gave me a wide variety of topics to share my thoughts on with a more defined jumping off point compared to my other entries where I’d just introduce a topic at random and explore it from scratch.

I decided to bring In Reply back, only this time, I’ll be including responses to YouTube videos. Since I’m not glued to YouTube, though, expect my replies to feature a mere handful of creators since they’re the only ones I watch on a fairly regular basis.

Also expect to see some replies to people I’m not subscribed to because I let YouTube play in the background a lot, so it eventually cycles around to channels I’ve never seen before.

What’s important is that I like to save time by writing out my response without explaining what I’m responding to. I’ll link to it and that’s it. If you want to understand it fully, you’ll have to read/watch it yourself.

That means you can stifle any claims of me being misleading, taking something out of context or cherry picking if I paraphrase or take other shortcuts in the interest of brevity because you have what I’m referring to right in front of you to comb over on your own time.

Got it? Good.

Why I Don’t Debate

If you knew me, you’d know that I’ve spent a significant chunk of my internet history writing social commentary, and one thing I hate about our society is how everything is seen as (or devolves into) a debate.

The general populace seems incapable of formulating opinions that don’t exist and/or aren’t communicated expressly as an argument against an opposing thought. Putting that less stupidly, too many folks act like the point of sharing your opinion, perhaps even having one at all, is to make your case or refute someone else’s.

I don’t “do” debates. I just discuss things. I think for the sake of thinking and I share my perspectives to add to perspectives. Not to prove myself right and another wrong.

That’s not to say that I don’t believe some opinions are garbage or that I don’t ever share my own opinion in hopes that it’ll, at most, affect some positive change and, at least, give fellow Earthers something to think about. That back and forth to “challenge” their views or my own just isn’t my motivation and I won’t engage with those who seem driven by it.

Where others see a fence with a side to fall on,
I just see a yard.

Creeps Revisited

After posting what was certainly a poor generalized scratch on the surface of the discussion about what it means to be a creep and how that term is beginning to influence gender dynamics, it occurred to me that I didn’t include any anecdotes.

(Actually, it occurred to me while a stranger was shaking me like a chilled cocktail, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…)

Although I was speaking on the issue as someone who’d despise the behaviors I warned against even if I weren’t confronted with them on a regular basis, I’m revisiting the subject to give you a quick peek into what I personally deal with on that front to better illustrate how some of my “creep rules” play out in real life.

Car Creep

I was walking down the street, minding my peppers and onions, when I noticed a car idling behind me. Whenever that happens, it’s usually a guy giving me a look over, so I did what I always do in that situation: I sped up.

To be clear, I didn’t assume the driver was a creep or even a male. It could have been a lost soul inching along to get their bearings or someone in the passionate throes of an alien abduction. I reacted as if the driver were a potential threat simply because the probability of that outcome given my past experiences made it the safest call.

Moving on, I’ve said this before and it’s worth saying again that if a woman breaks the fucking sound barrier to get away from you, she probably doesn’t want to engage. But creeps often struggle with that kind of logic. Some are so predatory, in fact, that they’re incited to chase you because you’re running away as if your attempt to escape further identifies you as prey.

So as I double timed it, I wasn’t surprised the driver sped up.

Reaching my side, he beeped his horn, rolled his window down, said hey, and made kissy-face noises at me. I kept walking and he said hey again.

I turned briefly with a stony frown to acknowledge that I know he’s there. I’m not deaf. I just don’t give a shit. Then I continued walking, crossing the intersection into the parking lot of a grocery store.

He left the turning lane and went straight to enter the lot behind me, beeping at me again, tailgating me. So I cut across the parking lot at a diagonal, weaving through the parked cars to prevent him from following me directly.

In response, he sped ahead to the next available aisle and screeched his car to a halt about two feet in front of me to block my path as I emerged from between the cars. He smirked and said hey sweetheart, looking me up and down.

I quickly walked around his car and continued my journey while calculating the odds that I was gonna have to beat a man’s ass in the next five minutes.

He sat there a moment staring at me and eventually made his way back to the road he was on, which I knew because I make sure creeps are completely gone before continuing about my day. I don’t need any surprises that don’t include ice cream and cake.

What did the stranger do wrong?

A) Followed me in his car.

B) Made kissy-face noises at me.

C) Attempted to block my path.

D) All of the above.

If you answered D, congratulations! You’re a star!

I’d like to point out that this encounter, like the majority of encounters I have with creeps, happened in broad daylight. So it wasn’t necessarily that I feared for my safety in the same way that I would if I were alone at night in a secluded area. I’ve just had enough negative experiences with random men on the street to be mindful of specific behaviors I find questionable. Situational awareness is my middle name! 

(It’s French.)

Hold on, woman! Guys don’t follow chicks like that for no reason! You were probably dressed like a slut or he was just plain crazy!

One, guys follow me like that on a regular basis. It wasn’t an isolated case. Two, it’s more likely to happen to women like me who walk everywhere and take public transportation. Women who drive everywhere are better shielded from it, so it may not be the norm for them to the same extent.

Three, creepy and crazy aren’t mutually exclusive and we don’t need a lot of either running around, so I don’t much care about that distinction where my well-being is concerned.

Four, I don’t condone victim blaming, but I also object to the willfully obtuse using victim blaming as a knee-jerk response whenever someone touches upon the reality that it is indeed possible to increase (or decrease) the odds of being harassed. You just can’t predict if and when your efforts will make a difference.

Putting it another way, the fact that a man can harass you for any number of reasons outside your control doesn’t mean every man will.

Never assume that you have no control over what happens to you in life just because you aren’t to blame for it.

It’s a very dangerous message to send to those who become powerless – that they were powerless from the start – and that’s something I feel strongly about in a society so desperate to effect positive change in the lives of women that it’s fine playing dumb to make a point.

Not to get off track, but I find it sad that we put forth such concerted effort to make women feel empowered by taking their clothes off or being sexually provocative while shirking our responsibility as a society to make women feel empowered by taking their personal safety into their own hands.

We need to get past the sticking point that the only one to blame for a woman being attacked is her attacker by telling women yes, you can take steps to protect yourselves. That doesn’t mean it’s your fault if you’re assaulted anyway.

So to the dismay of those who’ll say bringing my attire into the discussion is just a form of victim blaming, I think it’s valid commentary and worth mentioning that I wasn’t dressed in a way one may consider likely to provoke unwanted attention. I was in sneakers, sweats, and a sweatshirt.

But doesn’t that prove you can be harassed regardless of what you’re wearing, which is the argument you’re against?

No – because that’s not what I’m against. I’m against the belief that if you can be harassed regardless of what you’re wearing, then what you’re wearing is never relevant.

I’ll also point out that anyone who thinks my attire couldn’t be a factor simply because it wasn’t what we’d deem salacious proves that we view certain attire as inherently “inviting” – a concept we need to explore more and don’t.

Store Creep

I was working at a store, scanning some merchandise, when a customer walked up to me and said, “Hey, sweetie. Where can I find the belts,” while slowly stroking the length of my arm. What’s wrong with this picture?

A) He called me sweetie.

B) He stroked my arm.

C) Both.

This one is tricky!

I understand and acknowledge why men oughtn’t use terms like sweetie and baby when addressing women they don’t know, but I also think men shouldn’t be condemned for calling you that simply because they’re men.

The problem with these words is the underlying attitude motivating their use, and it’s sexist to assume you know what that attitude is based solely on gender.

You should have a little more to go on than that and I’d say the creepy way this guy was touching me while nearly pressed up against my body qualifies as a little more, so the correct answer is C because of B.

Buffet Creep

I went into my grocery to grab some tasties from the buffet. A man on the opposite side came over to me and said something innocuous about the food. I laughed politely and agreed. Then this happened…

Your food has onions in it. Guess you won’t be kissing your boyfriend after eating it, hmm? Or you’ll be kissing him, just not deeply with your tongues in each other’s mouths, hmmmm? On the couch? Maybe you’ll be on the couch and you’re kissing each other deeply with your tongues, but only for, maybe, fifteen minutes, hmmmmm? Or will it be all night? Will you be kissing deeply on the couch all night? You will, hmmmmmmmmm? 

What went wrong?

A) He started talking about me deeply kissing my boyfriend.

B) He kept saying hmm in a disturbing way.

C) He was commenting on my choice of food.

D) All of the above.

The answer is D because I don’t need people all up in my food’s business, thank you. Moreover, I think I covered this in my original post, but it’s creepy when a stranger talks about you doing physically intimate or sexual things. Especially when they’re even mildly descriptive.

In my finest British accent, it simply isn’t done.

Gym Creep

I was doing lats at the gym when a guy came up behind me and said something like, “You’re working hard,” while massaging my shoulders. It was all downhill from there.

Me: Can you stop touching me, please?

Him: You look like you need a massage, though. *still massaging me*

Me: *releasing the bar* I’m pretty sure I asked you to stop touching me.

Him: I like a girl who takes care of herself. You look good. What’s your name? *still massaging me*

Me: *standing up* If you put your hands on me again, we’re gonna have a fucking problem.

We had everyone’s attention by then since it was a very small gym, though no one intervened because humans. I was standing nose-to-nose with him and he didn’t say anything, so I pushed by him and went to another machine.

As I was setting it up, he came up to me and took my hand, asking again for my name. I pulled my hand away, turned around, and said, “What the fuck did I just say to you?”

I was so enraged that I don’t recall what he said back. I just remember it being ignorant and me leaving the gym because one or both of us was about to end up in the hospital. Where did this guy fail?

A) He massaged me without my permission.

B) He ignored my objections.

C) Both.

Correct! The answer is C. You’re getting good at this!

Understand that while I personally have little qualms about fighting a man if it comes down to it because you never know when you may not have a choice, I believe we should always seek to avoid physical confrontation instead of responding to inappropriate behavior with threats that could escalate the situation.

So if a guy (or girl) is putting their hands on you in a public space, don’t do what I did and get in their face about it. Make a scene and get management or the authorities involved. In this case, the former wasn’t there and the latter would have taken longer to call than it took to walk away, so I didn’t practice what I preach.

I included this example to remind you that above all, the creepiest creeps are the ones who completely ignore you telling them outright that their advances aren’t wanted or that what they’re doing isn’t okay.

Other Store Creep

I was working at a store when a customer approached and asked if the item I was standing near was on sale. I said it wasn’t, at which point he grabbed me by the arms and started shaking me violently while saying in a fit of laughter, “You heard her! She said it’s an extra 20% off!”

A coworker witnessing this said, “Um… do you need me to come over there?” I shook my head as I pulled away from the guy, who was still laughing.

Once he calmed down, he asked where something was, I answered, and he thanked me, walking off with a final, “Have a good day, sweetheart!”

Why was this not okay?

A) He was touching me.

B) He was shaking me.

C) What the fuck?

The answer, of course, is C.

Did that encounter make him a vicious predator? No. He honestly just struck me as a happy, outgoing guy having a little fun. He even resembled Santa Claus. Maybe he was Santa Claus.

But you can’t overlook or be unaware of your culture’s social graces, like the fact that you don’t go around shaking the living daylights out of complete strangers.

His failure to abide by something so obvious, especially where a female is concerned, raised too many questions with potentially creepy answers, making him kind of creepy by extension.

The length of time he shook me was also creepy. It wasn’t a quick haha. It was a prolonged let’s see if I can get her tits to launch into the atmosphere situation.

The lesson to be learned from this one is that someone can be a creep without being scary, violent or mean. Creepiness isn’t defined by hostility or aggression so much as by invasion of privacy, body, and space. In short, there are nice creeps. They’re still creeps.

Hotel Creep

I met a guy during a business event and he told me he wanted to crawl inside my skin. I won’t even quiz you on this one. While that may be the kind of “poetic” thing some find romantic on screen, in real life, someone you just met telling you they want to crawl inside your outermost organ is creepy as hell.

Disproportionate intensity always makes something otherwise harmless come across as unsettling. In this case, the guy seemed way too emotionally intense, and people who “feel too much” are a lot more appealing in theory than they are in practice.

Pool Creep

While I’d love to finish this post off with the comedy of horrors that was a stranger’s extended harassment of me at the pool – including the slice of pizza he tried to force into my mouth – I’d rather skip to the shocking admission that I gave him a pass for a few reasons.

One, he was so drunk (and high) that his ability to stand up, let alone control himself, was severely compromised. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t remember anything that happened when he woke up the next day.

Two, he wasn’t threatening. I didn’t feel at any point that I was in danger and he didn’t put his hands on me. He was just being inappropriate, and it was obnoxious because he wouldn’t (see; couldn’t) stop.

Note that him trying to get me to eat pizza doesn’t really count as putting his hands on me since his hands were on the slice.

Three, several people were trying to rein him in, including his friends and a lifeguard who kept checking on me to make sure I was okay whenever he saw any guy come up to me. Side note, his concern was sweet.

So while I certainly didn’t condone the dude’s behavior and continued to make it clear that it was unwanted, I fully understood that I was trying to negotiate with someone who lacked the capacity for restraint.

In light of that, I tried to manage it the same way I’d handle someone mentally ill until his friends were able to get him home. I remember him apologizing to me as they dragged him off in a floppy, slurring mass. Definitely someone who needed to cut back on the “recreational” activities.

Anyway!

I could go on with more – and far worse – examples, but I think I’ll end it here with a thought instead: Men have been sexually harassing, stalking, and generally being creeps to me since I hit puberty, and that’s echoed by the overwhelming majority of women I’ve met in my life.

It’s so frequent that it’s normalized. As a female, you expect it to happen at some point – and it does. The good thing is that we’re in a time when we can speak up about it and speak against men (and women) who try to justify it.

Even better, we have the opportunity to educate men who genuinely don’t realize that what they’re doing bothers us or is wrong because that behavior has been normalized for them as well.

Regardless, while all of this unwanted attention hasn’t “screwed me up”, it’s given me a duel perspective. The fact that so many men think they can walk around imposing themselves on women at will, or being sexually explicit as they see fit with little to no regard for how we feel or how it affects us is so astonishing that I cease to be astonished.

I now exist in this weird state where every time it happens to me or anyone else, I’m both surprised and not surprised, because I shouldn’t be surprised, and that’s surprising.

Don’t even get me started on the creeps who’ve said they have the right to treat women however they want by virtue of being men because women were “put here” for them. That’s a kettle for another stove…

The Articulate Plague

A black woman was talking about makeup and beauty, and a white guy commented that she was very articulate. I rolled my eyes and I’d bet another black person reading this already knows why.

It’s one of those seemingly innocuous things you either pick up on from firsthand experience living in a particular skin or from being socially conscious – which not enough people are.

Let’s call it a symptom.

There’s a fairly popular game called Plague Inc. wherein the goal is to kill everyone on the planet with a pathogen you’ve created, and as a simulation that explores the spread of disease and the devastating potential it has to obliterate us on a global scale, there are some things you need to consider.

Time is an important factor because you want to kill everyone before the world finds a cure, so the pathogen has to be infectious enough to spread quickly. It also has to be resistant enough to changes in climate to spread widely. And lastly, it has to mutate to make treating it more difficult.

The trickiest bit is in balancing the fact that it has to be deadly enough to kill, but not so deadly that it kills its carriers faster than they can infect others – and for the most part, that’s controlled by manipulating symptoms.

You want the symptoms to be severe enough to be fatal, but not so severe that people notice them too soon. Because it’s symptoms that call attention to the disease, and once people are aware of the disease, they set down the path to cure it.

We suffer many diseases as a society – things that burn through us like wildfire before anyone takes note. And by the time we realize something awful is spreading, we’re already infected and in a weaker position to fight it.

My point is that failing to acknowledge that something is a symptom of a greater problem almost guarantees it’ll never be solved.

Now that I’ve enlightened you with the delightful parallel that is a game about decimating mankind, let’s see how it applies to this particular post.

Having grown up in America, it’s no secret that when someone who isn’t black thinks of a black person, there are quite a few stereotypes that come to mind.

Some good. Many not.

One of the most prominent “nots” is that we don’t speak proper English – the consensus that we butcher the language more than Americans in general. That every other word out of our mouths is either profane, grammatically incorrect, or some ridiculous, unintelligible slang others mock yet will eventually adopt nonetheless.

It’s a given to many that we sound uneducated and illiterate to the point of being humorous, which is why it’s so entertaining to mimic us. I got my hair did! Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Since this is the way blacks are viewed by and large, there always appears to be this underlying hint of surprise when a black person doesn’t speak that way. And that surprise compels them to acknowledge the anomaly.

So we’ve ended up with a society full of people – primarily white people – who hear a black person speak in a way that would otherwise be considered unworthy of note and the first thing that comes to mind is, “My, isn’t he/she articulate!”

Of course, they think it’s a compliment – just like they think it’s a compliment when they tell us we’re not like other blacks or that they “don’t see color”.

But those of us who recognize these compliments as symptoms of the disease that is the perception of blacks as inferior in a number of ways are rightly insulted or annoyed.

It amazes me how many folks can’t wrap their heads around this and it’s frustrating trying to explain something to someone fundamentally ill-equipped to understand it, so I’ll draw another parallel.

It’s like if I were to say to a random guy, “You don’t seem like a rapist at all!” I wouldn’t blame him if his initial reaction were, “Why would I seem like a rapist?” Because that’s the question, isn’t it?

Why wouldn’t I be articulate?

The answer is, very simply, because I’m black and that’s the problem. It isn’t that someone wanted to pay us a compliment. It’s that someone thought it was something that needed to be complimented as if it’s unusual when there’s nothing unusual about it.

If and when a white person is called articulate, it’s because they actually express themselves with a notable eloquence and effect. Meanwhile, all a black person has to do is structure a sentence properly and it’s seen as a miracle. That’s how low people have set our bar in their minds.

“I went to the store to buy soup but they didn’t have any.”
“Whoa! You’re so articulate! I expected you to say you done be going to buy soups but ain’t no soups be having them though because stereotypes!”

It’s so common that it’s been addressed again… and again… and again. In person, in television and film, in studies, news articles, comedy. Yet those of us who don’t speak like a black caricature are still inundated with people who feel compelled to point out that we’re articulate.

Then they learn nothing when we explain why it’s problematic because they’re too busy arguing about how we should take it.

Equally bad are blacks who’ve internalized this negative perception of how we speak and instead of saying we’re articulate, say that we sound white. It’s just a different branch of the same ignorant tree.

I remember when a white coworker I’d become friends with said, “You should give me your Ebonics dictionary because you obviously don’t use it.”

“What?”

“I just mean that you don’t speak in Ebonics and all that yo yo and he be doing and that kind of stuff. You speak properly.”

I schooled my friend on why that was both the dumbest and most racist thing he’d ever said to me. He apologized and seemed to get it, but it’s not always that simple.

So the next time you’re tempted to comment on how “articulate” a black person is, I want you to think hard and honestly about why that word came to mind.

Was it because their way of speaking or writing was really that impactful in its clarity, expressiveness and the like? Or was it because you were expecting them to sound like “something else”?

Picture them as any other race.
Does it still seem worth complimenting?

It’s easy to speak and act and feel without wondering why. For people who read my posts to find out I’m black and say I just assumed you were white without giving any thought to why they did. But easy rarely makes you more intelligent. Easy rarely makes you more aware. And easy rarely makes you better.

Be better.