From: Amara Jali, The Volta Times
Being Black in a white country is difficult for most Black people.
Of course, because of unavoidable setbacks like discrimination.
For example, the white person in charge of salaries at your job will probably give you less money than other white people in the same position. Or they might just put you in a position that is lower than what you are qualified for, if you are lucky at all to get hired.
You might also face racism–people say or do nasty things: just because they don’t like you, just because they have been trained to despise your skin color.
But there are also things that are said and done by “well-meaning” white people who don’t have a deep-seated hatred for Black people, but are just pretty ignorant in conversing with anyone who is unlike them.
Unwittingly, they make comments that consciously or unconsciously undermine your success or remind you constantly that they think of you as “other.”
We call these everyday occurrences of racism, discrimination, and aggravation: microaggressions.
Imagine, one thing that one white person says might be perfectly harmless.
But if you go entire days and weeks and months of hearing the same ignorant or undermining statements, they can add up pretty quickly and make for an unpleasant experience for Black people in a white country.
The students at Oxford University in the United Kingdom spoke out against these microaggressions.
In a series of pictures, they expressed racial statements they encounter daily while being Oxford students.
Such microaggressions give Black students at selective colleges an added burden in addition to their study loads.
Do some of these annoying things white people say sound familiar to you?
I have one: ‘Can I rap? No. I am not the next rapper on the block. Sorry, white people.’
I don’t know Kabongo from Zimbabwe. I am from Mali. And its possible Kabongo might one day visit Mali, or I Zimbabwe. I still wouldn’t know him. Even if I met a Kabongo, I am not sure he will be the one you are looking for.
‘I didn’t get here on affirmative action. You did. That’s the only reason there are so many of you here!’
‘I wish I had gotten here on affirmative action like you and your friends have!’ The problem with my white colleagues in college is that the refuse to understand that their spot in college is entirely based on affirmative action. That in every school there are only 2 -3 percent Black speak more to that practice than to the whistles of black affirmative action. Let’s learn to label things the right way.
‘No, I don’t like fried chicken or watermelons. Crackers, however, I love.’
‘My hair is not kinky. It’s curly, Thank you.’
‘We don’t know Bob Marley. And we don’t smoke weed all day like you do and not be dropped in jail by your occupying white forces – cops. Thank you.’
There is truth in every stigma, dont be so thin skinned…