“To the white girl named Ally”

In college I studied Acting in a BFA program that I absolutely loved. But I was the only Black person in my class.

Being the only Black person in any setting comes with inevitable micro-aggressions, awkward moments, and isolating feelings. The most egregious of those moments for me was when one of my white classmates (someone who had regularly been on the other side of those micro-aggressions, awkward moments, and isolating feelings) was working on an Iago monologue from Othello. After a few rehearsals in class, I noticed that she was looking directly at me in the audience whenever she had a line that focused on Othello.

I thought I was imagining it. There’s no way she was doing this on purpose. So I pretended not to notice. And it continued to happen.

One day I decided to confront her about it. I pulled her aside after class to ask if I was imagining it or if she was, in fact, making me her Othello. She said, so plainly, that of course she was. But I shouldn’t take it personally! She would also think about our only Black faculty member for inspiration for her character’s racism.

My blood boiled. I tried my damndest to keep my composure and calmly explain that this was not only completely unacceptable from an acting standpoint, but also hurt me on a personal level. She could not comprehend. So I simply told her to stop doing it and to keep her distance from me because we were not friends. (Listen, sometimes you gotta just tell people you can’t f*** with them anymore).

Then I went home and wrote this poem. Well, I started to write it. I wrote a few scattered lines and then left it in my notebook. Then I saw a Facebook post (I can’t remember if it was from her or another white friend) arguing against the #OscarsSoWhite response to the lack of Black actors nominated for Oscars. And I wrote more. Recently, I had another white woman I know post something on social media about Black people that really just rubbed me the wrong way, and I found this poem again. Finally, I finished it.

“To the white girl named Ally”

To the white girl who listens to Ghetto Boys and Tyler the Creator,

You may call yourself “ally,”

You may feel the warmth of your “Black pride” swallow the chill of your white guilt,

But before you speak the word ally, realize this:

Before I am a woman,

Before I am 28 years old,

Before I am two Bachelor’s degrees, graduated with Honors,

Before I am Mariah,

I am Black.

My Blackness is not measured in Facebook posts or the number of “bitches,” “hoes,” and “niggas” in the most played song on my Spotify.

I do not have the privilege of snapping my fingers to “Niggas in Paris” but plugging my ears when another Black teenager is shot down by the police.

That shot rings in my ears with every breath I take.

That shot echoes in my little brothers’ heartbeats.

I do not have the privilege of praising The Help, but shutting my eyes to the blinding whiteness of the Oscars.

“Why do we have to make it about race? Can’t we just honor the best work?”

I wish we could.

I wish I didn’t have to know that in the 91 years of the Academy Awards, only one Black woman has won for Best Actress.

Or that in America, Black women make 62 cents to the white man’s dollar.

I wish I didn’t have to know that 1 in 4 Black girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18.

It must be nice.

It must be nice to live in a world where race doesn’t matter.

A world where America lives up to its promise of being the Land of the Free.

A post-MLK Jr.-world where Selma is not now.

Where you don’t have to fear “I can’t breathe” being the last words you speak.

A world where you call yourself “ally” while continuing the oppression of the people your white feminism claims to fight for.

Yes, we have to make it about race.

I have to make it about race.

My life is about race.