But I will admit that there have been moments where certain acts of ignorance by my fellow darkies have made me feel like hiding my head in the sand to avoid identifying myself with this racial group.
Extremely savage acts of genocide and xenophobia, where one group will not hesitate in the slaying of members belonging to another group simply because they are darker, belong to a different ethnic group, or because they speak a language that’s foreign to their own.
While I can’t say I know what it must feel like to be persecuted by your own race because of the former, I do know what it’s like to be ostracized by my own people because I’m different from them in some way or the other.
I have been mocked for speaking "white", ridiculed because "I have a flat ass for a black girl", and accused of thinking myself better than my peers because I’d rather have a quiet night in with a good book, instead of attending a street bash and engaging in the debaucheries of the evening.
I have also been called out for not embracing my ethnic hair. Yet, my natural hair has never been good enough according to black standards.
I recently found myself engaged in a heated disagreement with an articulate and dapper black gentleman. According to him, I was a sell-out for encouraging societal ideals of what a woman (a black woman, to be exact) should look like if she is to be deemed beautiful in Western civilization.
I guess my mistake was being of the assumption that the lesson on "black consciousness 101" went both ways. His superiority complex quickly perished when I decided to share a few observations of my own about him.
His German-manufactured vehicle, the iPhone in his right hand, his Italian shoes, how he felt it necessary to address me in English (and introduce himself as 'Anthony' as opposed to his native name), his preference for American music – basically, his overall bulk consumption of Western culture. Much to the delight of our spectators, I imagined them chanting something along the lines of "Pabi, boma ye!"
Naturally, he hurled a couple of insults my way, before getting in his car and driving off.
What I find amusing is that if it were a white person making such snide remarks to a black person, they’d be accused of being racist bigots.
And more often than not, such cases of prejudice towards each other as a people, no matter how severe or trivial, always seem to share a common denominator: they are always blamed in some way, on a Western (read, white) influence of sorts.
So I guess it’s okay for us to express this hatred and belittlement towards each other openly, just as long as everyone else who isn’t part of the black circle turns a blind eye and does not treat us as they see us treating each other then?
Here’s to our double standards. I’ll drink to that!