If reading the comments about anything related to Black people, comments will always be visible that attempt to steer the conversation away from Blackness unless the moderators are on top of it. Usually, the worst offenders are those who make the issue about women or the queer community–conveniently forgetting that there are Black women and a Black queer community. When they have nothing left, they revert to the tired tropes of equating the Black experience to any other experience than Blackness, which they have ignored for centuries. Despite the dogged belief that not talking about racism will end it, so many beneficiaries and sycophants are desperate to bring conversations back to the “default,” which they will not acknowledge to be whiteness.
Needing everything to be about the “default” speaks to a need to control the conversation, which is one of the reasons that the racial construct began in the first place. Subjugated people were joining forces, but then some power-hungry monster told some of the oppressed that they were “white,” and that led to the relentless demand for control that continues to drive beneficiaries to this day. This is all part of the “not all” and “what about” behavior that is supposed to drive people back into supporting the dominant narrative. The demand for a “default” is evidence of an industrialized mindset that cannot think beyond the only worldview a mind has been propagandized to believe. “Defaults” do not exist within the natural world, which is why they are part of the dominant narrative.
Additionally, pretending that all experiences are equal is demonstrating ignorance about how things have worked in the empire, even with all the evidence to support otherwise. No, all women were not given the right to vote with the 19th Amendment–only white women, while other women were terrorized if they tried to vote. White women fighting to work outside the home deliberately ignored the fact that women of color had no choice but to work outside the home based on being forced to take subpar wages. Black little girls have been told that they were horrible things for most of their childhood, while white little girls were told that they were supposed to be the beauty standards. This is just the conversation surrounding the “shared” experience of being women, and already there are wild differences between those existing in Blackness versus beneficiaries of the dominant narrative.
Mainly, however, trying to steer a conversation about race into a “default” is a refusal to accept that the accountability bill is due now that no Black people are actively looking to connect with others on a regular basis. Nobody is looking to create fake moments of connection that cost nothing to beneficiaries and sycophants, and nobody believes in performative empathy without vulnerability. Even with all the “conversations” and “symbols,” life is actually worse for Black people because during all those engagements, the beneficiaries wanted to recenter themselves instead of addressing the issues at hand. The hand-holding and the positive spin are over, and too many people have been left with the uncomfortable truth that life is fundamentally different for those who are not beneficiaries, and only slightly similar for sycophants. Lies now look like lies, and those who never wanted to face themselves have no other choice.
There is only one solution to address this constant command to bring everything back to whiteness: stop disrupting racial conversations just to bring back the dominant narrative. No one asked for that story, and ignoring others is just a bid for control. Conditioning others to accept a “default” is morally reprehensible, and it is time to accept that yes, some differences cannot be smiled away, and coming together involves acknowledging and addressing that fact.
Chasing A Dying Empire 