But I Thought We Lived In A Post-Racial Society (*sarcasm turned up to eleven*)

Go, go now and read: 10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People:

1) Racism Is Bad, 2) You Should Stay And Fight For Change, 3) I Don’t SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Race!!!!!, 4) Being Expected To Take It, 5) Conflating Racism For Classism, 6) Erasing Racism From Racial Issues, 7) Prove It To Me, 8) I’m Really Not The Angry Militant POC You Think I Am, 9) Self-Esteem Negates All Racism, 10) Racism Is Not Happening In A Vacuum

and the follow up post, A MESSAGE FROM AN EDITOR TO RASCISTS WHITES: IF YOU CAN’T TAKE THE TRUTH THEN STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM US NIGGERS!!!

In response to the most popular blog post we have ever had, 10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People; I would just like to say to all those arrogant white folks stay away from this site.  We here at this site have been producing very valuable and insightful information about Africans, Mexicans, Indigenous, and other colonized people for well over a year now.  Well what do you know, a post that made white people feel “uncomfortable” elicited the most responses.  That just tells me, we are hitting the wrong demographic, so I want to rectify that.  If you feel the need to tell us, the “Dark Hordes”, how your little feelings got hurt, then take your ass away from our site and develop you own called “Whitefolkscantakethetruth.com”!!!

[…]

Another point I want to bring up in response to some of the apocryphal comments I read is that I always hear that women suffer like Black people, then how does a Black woman suffer then?  Tell me you arrogant bastards?  It’s clear to me that you equate being a “woman” with being a white woman, so Black women are beyond the purview for humanity.

[…]

Did I forget to mention, I am one of the editors by the way.  Smile motherfuckers.

Well, yes.

Dealing With My Deviance

I’m a woman. I’m black. I’m kinky.

Now while I’ve mostly dealt with my feelings on being a kinky woman, there’s a pretty damn significant part of my identity I’m still working to reconcile to everything else.

This is not a society that’s been kind to women, and certainly not women of color. Our sexuality is not our own, instead this is a world socialized with the idea that people of color’s sexuality does no’t belong to us, that women of color’s sexuality, my sexuality is for public consumption- everyone else gets to have a say about it but me. So when I right pro-sex posts celebrating the power of consent, the right to feel pleasure, to be kinky, sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’m falling into that tired old stereotype of the hypersexual black woman.

But does the solution really lie in suppressing my desire? Should I “clean up my act” because heaven forfend there are white people in the room while I’m expressing my deviance?

Well, no (or at least I hope not) because that way only madness lies.

It certainly hasn’t done us any favors, being one of the reasons the mammy stereotype took such hold. Not to mention the fact that it split women of color up into opposing archetypes that were created to challenge each other.  There’s constant self-policing in our communities (anyone remember the Ciara ‘Love Sex Magic’ kerfuffle, or how about the more recent Rihanna S&M rumbling– though admittedly, hers is even more complicated than just a matter of race and kink); it is that horrible “there are white people in the room” mentality that keeps us repressed and heteronormative, keeping us compliant and ‘respectable’. Or at least that is what our own communities tell us, because I hope I do not have to tell you it is certainly not working for us. Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire are alive and thriving- to our detriment; our sexuality still falls at the intersection of race and gender.

I have to admit that I still hesitate before condemning that self-enforced silence. It was not born in a vacuum. The erasure of deviance (queerness, kink, anything that isn’t widely considered ‘acceptable’ or ‘respectable’)  in communities of color is an ugly scar; it is a reflection of a history of violence, slavery, and debasement. So I hesitate, I hesitate because I get it. I still live it. Though the question remains: can the solution really lie in suppressing my desire?

No- and more of us need to say this with conviction. Avoiding deviance to avoid oppression just reinforces the oppression. It has been said before, and again and again, as women we need to take back our right to pleasure, as women of color, more so. The discussion needs to start happening amongst ourselves- and not in the hushed whispers we are used to. Proudly and deviantly, let’s talk about sex, baby (and queerness, and kink, and all that’s been taboo)!