Do y'all really love us?

I love being Black. I mean, if I could come back in another life, I'd ask to come back Black. I teach in a school with 98% Black students. I went to the best Black College in the country. I can't wait to have children one day and raise little Black Queens and Kings. If I was alive in the 1960s, I would most likely have been a Black Panther fighting for the rights of my Black people. You get it, right? Right.

So it makes me sad to have to write a post like the one I'm about to write. Guys. I had 2 very eye opening arguments/confrontations with 2 Black men in a 2 day period that literally left my jaw dropped during and after each instance. Let me tell you about them.

1) So its Thursday night, I was out having a good time, and it was time to go home. I called an uber pool, which is the uber that picks up other people and divides the ride amongst everyone, so it works out cheaper. I like cheaper. So I get in the cab, and everyone's laughing. I'm like "uhhh, goodnight, what's so funny?". I chuckle naturally, because I'm thinking I'm about to hear a good joke.

Important info: The driver is a black man, probably about 30sumthin, and there are two white girls in the back seat.

The driver goes, "We were just tryna figure out if you were gonna be an angry black woman or not. But you a diva, what are you, like a part time model?". Yo. Whatever smile I had on my face, COMPLETELY disappeared. This was literally my face in that front seat:

I completely ignored his half ass attempt to lighten his ignorant statement with a shallow compliment and said "Excuse me? Why would that be your first thought? Why would you assume I'm gonna be an 'angry black woman, what does that even mean?" He says something along the lines of "I mean I was just saying, didn't know what I was about to get when you came in here, I see a lot as an uber driver." So I respond "I mean, the fact that that was your first thought is pretty sad, but okay. Thanks for that tho, you just inspired a blog post." He says "Oh yeah? About what?"

Me: "About how I enter a cab with a black man as a driver, that thought that it was okay to say he "didn't know if I was gonna be an angry black woman or not" in a cab with two white women in the back seat."

In my peripheral, I saw one of the white women in the back put her hand on her forehead. You know when white people hear something about race that makes them uncomfortable but they don't really have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation so they just make faces and hand gestures? Yeah, that's what was happening back there. Ask me if I care tho. *KANYE SHRUG*

Basically the driver just goes on to say a bunch of nothing, like "But that's what they say on social media, right? That black woman are angry." So after that statement, I officially decided that he was ignorant and I no longer wanted to converse. So I politely stopped responded and continued my text conversation (which was about his dumbass). So we're all in the cab, quiet, AND THIS MAN KEEPS TRYING TO TALK TO ME! "So you're a blogger, what school did you go to?" "Does your blog get a lot of views?" "Is that your full time job?" I responded to him asking about my school and said "I went to Howard University". This man says "Oh so you one of them bougie, smart black girls".

Arite. Now I'm annoyed. So AGAIN, I say "Sir, I really don't feel like speaking, can you please stop speaking to me?" This man goes on to say "So you wanna just sit here all quiet? I mean, you already messed up the whole mood in the cab, now you don't wanna talk?". So from here, we start arguing. In my mind, I'm telling myself 2 things.

a) Do not punch this man in the face, and

b)you're sitting right next to him, he's a stranger, he's ignorant, and you don't know what he's capable of.

So with those 2 thoughts, on top of him CLEARLY trying to push my buttons, I say "You know what? I'm gonna get out of this cab right now". Now, for all my Brooklyn folk, I was in the middle of downtown Brooklyn, on Tillary street, just off the bridge. Ya'll, we were in the middle of a busy ass intersection, that's how pissed I was. So as I'm opening the door to get out, this man says "SEE, LOOK AT YOU, ANGRY BLACK WOMAN!".

MY MOOD:

Man I got out that cab so fast before I started saying some very out of the character, disrespectful, vulgar things to his stupid ass.

Y'all with me so far? Cool. Second instance.

2. Now it's Friday, the very next day after dealing with the UberDoofus. I'm at a restaurant/bar type of thing with 2 of my homegirls. We were sitting next to a table with 2 guys and 2 women, all Black. My friends knew one of the guys at the table. Now, I don't know what called for this comment, but the other guy at the table makes a comment to one of my girls saying "I don't know why you didn't comb your hair before you left your house."

Pause. WHAT?!

Important Info: My friend wears her hair natural, and had a natural curly fro at the time.

I look at this man, who is sitting next to me, and ask him "How can you as a Black man look at this Black woman with her natural fro, and ask her why she didn't comb her hair?" Man...WHO TOLD ME TO SAY THAT! This dude immediately starts going off, yelling "WHO THE FUCK WAS TALKING TO YOU? YOU NEED TO MIND YOUR FUCKIN BUSINESS I CAN SAY WHATEVER I WANT!"

Yo...exactly what you're thinking right now is exactly what I was thinking. WHY ARE YOU SO MAD?! WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

In a nutshell, we continue to go back and forth, except he's screaming, and I'm talking in a very calm tone, which, as we all know, pisses off the other side even more. I mean, he's saying things like "Are you retarded?", and I would respond back calmly "I'm a special education teacher my love, we don't use the word 'retarded'." He's looking me up and down trying to find something wrong with me and all he could muster up was "YOU FUCKING HOE. YOU'RE A SLUT, HOW MANY NIGGAS YOU FUCKED THIS WEEK ALONE?". Now, at this moment, I knew this man was an ignorant clown. You don't even know me, and I'm a hoe? Man, I was dressed in a knee-length dress with some cute Valentino flip flops. You could take me home to mama, thats how cute and simple I looked. At that point, my friends and I were just laughing at him. You sound stupid, sir. For the rest of the time, he continued to talk loudly about me and to me, listening to what ever conversation I was having with my friends, and finding his way into it with something disrespectful to say like "Get off my dick" or "Shut the fuck up bitch". Now, I can admit that there were times when I said ignorant things back...because he was wilin'. I asked if he came out to his family yet because only a gay man cares to comment on woman's hair. I told him my flip flops cost more than his whole outfit. I mean, HOW MATURE CAN I REALLY BE FOR THE SECOND DAY IN A ROW? Basically, this ended with him and his "friends" leaving and him yelling on his way out "AND YALL TELL YOUR FRIEND TO SUCK MY DICK! BYEEEE."

*deep sigh* No, I really just sighed very deeply.

Okay, so my heart has been really heavy just revisiting these two moments. It made me start to think about the relationship between our people, specifically Black men and Black women. I'm not about to go on a rant about how Black men don't care about us or how they need to do better. None of that. I was just more so taken aback at how quick these two men were to try to break my spirit and demean my character. A perfect stranger. I mean, that cab driver saw me, and immediately questioned if I was going to be "an angry black woman". What made it worse was that he had two white women in the car that he was having this conversation with, and saw absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's like he was putting on a show for them. Literally, shuckin' and jivin' for these 2 women in the back seat that said not one single thing since I entered the vehicle.

Then you have this RestaurantDweeb that fixed his mouth to say something disrespectful about a sista's fro, asking why she didn't "comb her hair". If it means anything, the girl he was there with had a long, blonde weave. No shade, but it is what it is. I think what hurt a lot in that situation was the fact that none of his friends at the table even attempted to tell him to stop. They were all sitting there, lookin' dumb, as this black man disrespected someone that could have easily been their sister, cousin, friend... You think I could ever be anywhere with any of my male friends and watch them disrespect someone the way that man did me? HELLLLLL NO. I'd drag that man by his ears like I was his aunty about to be beat his ass for talking during the Sunday sermon at church and give him 2 GOOD BOX CROSS HIM FACE.

All jokes aside though, all I can do is pray for the ignorance of those two men to dissolve, and hope they can find more love for their women. In a society that was designed for our people to be nothing more than 'the help', how counterproductive is it to feed into the stereotypes against us? Are you helping us, or are you a part of the culture that continues to drag down women of color?

My challenge to you is to address ignorance in a teachable way. When I look back on these recent situations, I realize that I could have used those moments of anger and replaced it with opportunities to teach these 2 men something, because they obviously lacked a progressive mindset.

Black women, tell a black man that you love them today.

Black men, tell a black woman that you love her today.

Keep that same energy, everyday.

Love.