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"You're only saying that for white conservative approval"
Being black & even moderately conservative places you in a box filled with false narratives about your motivations & constantly fighting against positions you never personally made.
It's an uphill battle for your own voice because all people hear are the voices of other prominent black conservatives or the voice in their head based on the avatar they've mentally constructed.
Even the term "black conservative" is a box constructed for uniform thought as it's assumed we all think the same way and have the same perspectives on everything. Some enjoy living in this box but I don't.
One of the reasons I wrote my book "Black Victim To Black Victor" was because I wanted to have my own voice against narratives I completely disagreed with but also have a different approach that was different from the people I agreed with as well.
I wrote it in a way that is critical but compassionate and in the end unifying. I care very much about black people and don't appreciate the approach by some people on both sides with how they discuss race.
I don't appreciate the fear narratives created by the media & the tactics of manipulation that are used to get an emotional response from black people. I am constantly defending black people when I write. However, because I fit in this black conservative box, I must hate myself.
Because I choose to unify with people and find commonality with people who don't look like me, I just want to be white? I've spent years being severely depressed but not even in my darkest hour did I hate my skin complexion.
Recently someone said this about me (to paraphrase):
"If he told the truth he would lose his white audience"
This statement implies that I have no integrity and that I spend hours upon hours writing things I don't even believe.
It's this belief that we only say or believe things for someone else's affirmation. We risk ostracization and public ridicule just for a supposed white stranger's virtual high-five. Even in the midst of them reading something where I am defending black Americans, it's not enough.
The "white audience" narrative is laughable to me as well. The majority of BLM activists are white. Hell, the majority of Hip-Hop consumers are non-black. There is a white audience in virtually everything in America, so why is it only relevant to my assumed audience?
Everything we do is assumed to be performative rather than expressive. Let money enter the equation and it's because you're being paid to say these things. It could never be that you're being paid because you truly believe these things.
In the meantime, I am left fighting to have my voice heard over the most prominent black conservative voices because what they say always trickles down to people like myself. If they say something reckless, the rest of us in the box have to deal with the aftermath.
The truth is I hate all of these boxes. They're limiting how we can perceive the world around us. I hate having to qualify my thoughts into a special category of conservatism. I hate having my positions assumed because of someone else's statements simply because they look like me.
This box feels like a coffin at times because it signifies the death of good faith. But I'm not a victim, I knew this box existed, I just don't like it. If expressing myself means that I'll be "blacking wrong", then so be it.
I'm comfortable in my own skin and with my skin.
I Hate Being In the "Black Conservative" Box
This is a great essay. Because you have integrity, and courage fueled by honesty, you will always be placed in a “box” by other people (as you know). All we can do is ignore the boxes. Ultimately, other people’s perceptions are meaningless (again, as you know). In any event, if you’re not offending half the people you talk to, you’re not being honest. Thanks again for a great essay, Frederick
Look, I can't speak to your experience but I can speak to mine. After Hillary Clinton lost, women like me were blamed for not backing "one of our own." Never mind that I, a person who had voted Democrat for nearly twenty years and would gladly have voted for Bernie Sanders, found Hillary Clinton so repulsive a human being that I'd gladly give a shot to the "misogynist, racist" reality TV star. The whole plan to elect Hillary had been the same plan as the one to elect Barack Obama, and I fell for the one with Obama. Even though I would not have given it that name, somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured that everything that was wrong with our society was due to "cis heteronormative white male" ideology. And if someone was outside that "box," that person would definitely improve the situation simply because they would have views outside that description and act differently. Yeah, stupid, I know.
But when it came to Hillary Clinton, I wasn't going to fall for it a second time. What's wrong with our society is what's wrong with our society, and if you're going to counter those ills, you can't elect people who have profited from them, regardless of phenotype. Of course, spending the last six years defending my decision to vote for Trump, regardless of my reasons and earlier actions, has opened my eyes to many things, one of them being . . .
You can't reason with these people. I don't know if it is an honest albeit extremely unhealthy worldview or the only way they know to "win," but they want everyone to be in a box. And they hate people who refuse to go in a box or suggest to other people that we don't have to live in boxes. In fact, we shouldn't want to. The world is healthier with variety of perspective and thought, but it's not as easy to win elections or control people when you can't force them to live according to "flow charts" and "specs," so here we are.