I’ve noticed, as a black woman, that a lot of people expect me to react to certain things in a certain way. Cultural appropriation and white privilege? “Wrong, people should stop taking other cultures and using them for their own reasons.” Black Lives Matter? “People need to pay more attention to the way black people are being treated!”
However, I’ve never exactly fit the mold of a typical black woman. I’m not fond of hip-hop and rap. I have an unhealthy obsession with country music. I shop at Lily Pulitzer, and I’d rather be Elle Woods than Beyoncé. I’ve even been called the “whitest black girl” by a majority of my high school senior class, but I never considered it an insult.
Some would call me a “sell-out,” but I don’t think so.
I honestly don’t see why people, especially black people, get so upset about white people wearing cornrows, and dreadlocks. So what if Khloe Kardashian decided to put her hair into Bantu knots? So what if Marc Jacobs had his models wear multicolored dreads? It’s a hairstyle, not a statement of race. If one is willing to get upset over this, then the Dutch should have every right to get angry when someone wears a Dutch braid.
People get up in arms when a minority group is “discriminated against,” but seem oblivious to the fact that the same thing happens to majority groups as well. Yes, when one takes history into account, black people were often criticized for the way they wore their hair and the way they looked. But people seem to forget that this was a time when anyone who wasn’t black wouldn’t be caught embracing something commonly associated with African-Americans. But now society is getting angry that people no longer see anything wrong with these traits and have chosen to incorporate them into their lives. We can’t have it both ways.
This leads me to #BlackLivesMatter. I understand that police brutality is a problem. I am not ignorant to that. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s seen that this hashtag has actually set us back, rather than moved us forward. Lots of supporters of this movement get furious when anyone dares say #AllLivesMatter, but these people seem blind to the fact that they aren’t wrong.
This movement has created a divide between African-Americans and the rest of the populace. We should be making plans to fix the brutality issue rather than protesting against police officers. Why not start at the source and change the way police officers are trained in the academy? Make sure that situations can be properly handled when they become emotionally and possibly racially charged.
Maybe screen possible officers for any prejudices they may already have that might negatively affect the way they do their job? Confirm that relations in the academy are positive and that the men and women who attend leave there with positive opinions of their fellow officers who may be of a different race. Some police officers have gotten trigger happy, and aren’t shooting because they genuinely believe that they’re in danger of getting shot or stabbed, no matter the race of the perpetrator.
Although there are more bright spots in our world than I can possibly count, darkness has seeped into our every day lives in the form of race issues. It seems like no one sees that the only real different between us all is the amount of melanin in our skin. We’re all human at the end of the day. My opinion on these situations may not be popular. I may be considered ignorant by those who refuse to listen to another perspective. But I approached these topics with logic and objectivity, not emotion and personalization, and I think that made all the difference.