I’ve literally had people tell me what topics I should discuss in a forum that I had literally thought of myself. First of all, I was put next to a “pro-black” male friend who loves fetishizing black women, especially ones with dark skin and kinky hair or an afro. Apparently he had more “expertise” than I did sense he is “about” that stuff. Like I don’t talk about misogynoir, anti-blackness, or colorism. But I guess my words as a “measly” woman falls short.

Anyway, we were supposed to do a forum on #BlackLivesMatter and issues in the black community, but it was deliberately run off course. One girl who really didn’t know shit tried to tell me you could be sexist against man. And when I accordingly told her to look it up, her stubborn ass gonna tell me, “No, YOU look it up!” Gaslighting jerks acting like I didn’t come up with those facts. Then she ended up not doing the forum because I got to her and made her mad. I don’t care. She thought she could talk over me. But I was already mad at that point because she threatened to hit me. Okay. Even with violence, your point will still be flaccid.

Then people who don’t even like it when I speak of certain issues thought they could control what people I talked about. One girl a few days prior told me not to mention Lil’ Kim because she raps about her pussy and sucking dick. Then said Nicki Minaj was a ho, Beyonce didn’t represent “real” black women because she wears blond weaves sometimes, and told me the rappers I picked were too “thuggish,” but wants to settle for K.Dot. At least those non-respectable rappers are more progressive than the likes of Kendrick. She said, “Those celebrities don’t represent us! We’re not them.” Bullshit. They wanted to talk about Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Oprah, and other political and historical leaders with much more privilege than us. They just thought, “Silly black celebrities aren’t worthy progressive black people.” K.

Afterwards, I was told, “This OUR program, not just yours!” Oh, really? It may have been “our” program but “our” didn’t do the fliers (even then, I got lectured on how to do them) and “our” certainly didn’t come up with the topics. Into the forum, we watched bits of hotepy and anti-womanist and Sotomayor protegee’s, Tariq Nosebleed’s “Hidden Colors.” Afterwards we pulled out topics from the hat, which seemed to go smoothly, but we didn’t get to talk about all the topics and I really wanted to touch on “light vs dark” (I said to call it colorism, not “light vs. dark”) and misogynoir (but they called it “The problems between black men and black women), but instead, the assistant of our program went on a tangent about Oaklahoma. Talmbout it was a booming city about black businesses and wealth that was burned down. Okay, but that was not a part of the schedule. He just felt it was worthy to talk about, and he was on some respectability politics bullshit as well. So we didn’t discuss colorism or misogynoir the way I wanted to.

Which brings me to this, how you gonna say, “Our schools don’t teach us enough about black history. They only wanna teach us stuff they feel comfortable about,” but then skip out on colorism and misogynoir? Sounds like you just want to talk about black history topics YOU feel comfortable about. You want to hide colorism, the black patriarchy, misogynoir, ableism, and anti LGBTQIA sentiments in the black community. Black history isn’t just the “good things” about African Americans, it’s also about the bad things. The issues of those factors I just listed. It was a very weak forum, and I’m mad I was a part of it.