It is often the same people constantly complaining that “the Black community can never come together” who leave Black neighborhoods the moment they become financially successful, move into predominantly white communities, take their money, influence, connections, and resources with them, and then continue criticizing Black people from a distance.
Yes, people have the right to live wherever they choose. But choices can still be criticized, especially when someone’s idea of success is escaping Black neighborhoods rather than investing in making them better. You cannot constantly preach about Black unity while believing that the ultimate reward for your success is no longer having to live around Black people.
People always say they moved for better schools, safer neighborhoods, and a better quality of life. I understand wanting those things for your family. But we also need to confront why “better” is so often automatically associated with predominantly white spaces, while Black neighborhoods are treated as places to escape, abandon, and look down on instead of communities worth rebuilding.
If every Black person who gains wealth, education, influence, or professional connections immediately removes those resources from Black neighborhoods, then who exactly is supposed to stay and help strengthen them? You cannot drain a community of its resources and then ridicule it for struggling.
And no, you are not legally obligated to stay. But if you choose to leave, completely disconnect, invest everything you have into wealthier white communities, and contribute nothing to the Black community you came from, then you have no right to keep lecturing everybody else about why Black people cannot come together.
Everybody loves shouting, “We need to come together,” until togetherness requires them to live near Black people, invest in Black neighborhoods, support Black schools and businesses, or use their success to improve the communities that helped shape them.
You cannot make escaping Blackness the symbol of your success and then complain that the Black community lacks unity. You left the community, took your resources with you, and then blamed the people who remained for what your departure helped reinforce.
Great journalism by @Phil_Lewis_ here. Tuskegee kids discuss how they rarely see bonnets and durags on campus and how they’re dealing with a much more pressing housing crisis and an administration that granted an honorary degree to a Republican senator who is undoing critical race theory education in Alabama schools.
And the thing is the vast majority of the disconnected loudmouths who don’t know shit about this generation of HBCU students but still sought to tear these kids down won’t even read this bc they’re the intellectually lazy losers they accuse these ambitious, education seeking young ppl of being.
I’m glad these conversations about Blackness are happening because they are exposing how much elitism and classism still exist within the Black community, especially the contempt some people have for poor and working-class Black people.
And to be clear, Black children raised in the suburbs are not responsible for the choices their parents made. I understand why Black parents want safer neighborhoods, better-funded schools, and more opportunities for their children. The problem is when “wanting better” becomes adopting the same logic that produced white flight: escaping Black communities instead of questioning why those communities were deliberately neglected, underfunded, overpoliced, and denied resources in the first place.
Too many Black people are taught that success means “making it out,” moving into a predominantly white neighborhood, sending their children to predominantly white schools, and distancing themselves from anything associated with poor Blackness. Then that distance sometimes becomes judgment, superiority, and embarrassment toward the very communities they came from.
What concerns me is not simply a Black person having white friends. It is when someone becomes so socially disconnected from other Black people that their understanding of Black life is shaped mainly through white spaces. Proximity to whiteness should never become a substitute for solidarity with Black people, especially poor and working-class Black people.
i’m all for holding Black ppl accountable, that’s the only way we grow… the problem is, y’all wanna hold Black ppl accountable for stupid bullshit w/racist origins. no thank you.
And this is exactly why I don’t fuck with the whole bonnet ban conversation. It was never just about “professionalism.” A lot of it is rooted in people’s distaste and disdain for seeing products made specifically for Black hair worn in public.
Those women were staying at a hotel. They came downstairs early in the morning, wearing pajamas and bonnets, to eat the continental breakfast and mind their business. Instead, a grown man walked up filming, mocking, and harassing them as if they had done something wrong. They were not at work, in a courtroom, at a formal event, or bothering anyone. They were simply trying to eat breakfast.
That reaction proves the point. The moment some people see a Black woman in a bonnet or a Black man in a durag, they automatically start making assumptions about their character, class, intelligence, cleanliness, and self-respect. Even other Black people look at them with disgust and start talking down on them.
Wearing a bonnet outside does not justify humiliation, harassment, or public shaming. The fact that a harmless piece of hair protection can trigger this much anger says far more about the people doing the judging than it does about the person wearing it.
If you want to go to class dressed like this I don't have a problem with it. Y'all act like these people don't know not to show up at job interviews looking like this. Y'all may have a few examples of people showing up to job interviews like this but y'all are acting like the entire culture doesn't know how to properly dress for professional occasions.
When i was at A&T, I never recalled seeing a girl wear a bonnet to class. Maybe a handful of guys wearing durags. But even then, it wasn't alot for the administration to be pressed about it.
students can’t afford housing, students can’t afford books, students can’t afford student loans after graduation, but a bunch of grown ass dummies got together in a room & thought to draft up legislation about some fucking bonnets & durags.
I’m not fighting for anything. I’m fighting against mobilizing resources to create useless policies when yall have real, tangible, ACTUAL issues yall are ignoring
At my 18th birthday party, I quietly transferred my $3 million inheritance into a trust, just in case my family ever tried to reach it.
Everyone laughed and said I was being dramatic. But by the following morning, my parents said the words that proved I had just protected my entire future....