BLK Card Revoked

Dear B.L.U.N.T Radio,

So I just got into an argument with my friend about something I think is hella stupid. I don't believe in spanking children or any of this other traumatizing shit. I think it's barbaric and an echo from slavery days. Think about it. A slave comes in late and forgot to do the dishes. The master sees and beats them in front of all the other slaves or punishes them and all the other slaves that actually did their task to make examples…sound familiar. I have heard this scenario a million times and think it's time to end the cycle. This bitch had the nerve to tell me I wasn't black because I never experienced having the hell beat out of me by my parents. Bitch, do I look like Kunte Kente? Do I look like a dirty rug? Do I look like a set of drums? Do I look like a bitch is about to use me to sing a song? Do I look like your man’s penis because we both know you are not fucking him so he beats it out🍆? Dufuq, I need to get the fuck beat out of me to be black for? Talking about how I am gonna get my cookout privileges revoked. Bitch, how about you let your boss at work beat the hell out of you for being late or not performing a task and see if you feel the same? It makes no sense when you put it that way, right👀?

Come to think of it there are a lot of struggles I can't relate to😳. My parents never verbally or psychologically abused me. I have heard countless stories from so many black people I went to school with about  how their parents talked down to them. Like their children owed them this great debt they needed to get paid for in full with their sanity and self esteem. That shit has to stop. Sometimes I feel guilty because I actually had a happy childhood and adolescence. My parents were not perfect, but they never did that shit. I never had to hide who I was either and my parents accepted me. I came out at the age of 11 and have been gay as fuck ever since, so I cant relate to the common black LGBTQ 🌈✊🏾trauma of being rejected and invalidated either. I just can't. I'm built way different…....I actually like myself and my parents😫. I can't help but think it has everything to do with how I was brought up. 

My parents didn't try to shelter or police me either. I never had to sneak anyone in or sneak out of the house. I just asked my parents if I could have someone over or just went out and communicated it. My friends or partners spinninanite was never an issue either.

 Our community faces so many inner turmoils and I believe it's a result of generational trauma and learned behavior. That’s a conversation though many people of the black community aren't ready to have👏🏽. Is it wrong that I don't wanna perpetuate these trauma learned behaviors any longer? Am I less black for not having a shared traumatic experience? Do I deserve to get my black card revoked?


Dear B.L.U.N.T. Radio,

So my man likes to call me “white carribean” and I don't know how to take it. I can see his point sometimes. I am not the typical African American Black individual. Let me break that down a bit.  I don't listen to rap. Well... old school rap. He likes to make fun of the fact that I have no recollection of ever listening to Biggie or Tupac. To this day if one of their songs was playing I would look like a deer in headlights. I also had no idea who NWA was before the movie Straight Outta Compton came out. And you can forget about me knowing anything about Jay Z. I was an orchestra kid. I spent days listening to Bach's cello suite No 1 on repeat trying to perfect my vibrato. When would I have the time? 

I grew up in an extremely Christan Haitian household so the only secular music that I heard would either be classical or this old Bob Marley CD my mom would like to blast throughout the house on Sunday mornings when it was time for us to clean. I guess that's possibly where my love for reggae and soca music came from.  So yes sometimes I feel bad when I look back and see that most of my ideas of what makes us black is what I read in the Bluford High series. Maybe my concept of being “black” is skewed. 

I don't see why me not knowing all the new lil rappers is going to apply to my life 10 years from now. Will they be paying my bills? Will me knowing the latest mumble rapper help me discover the cure for cancer? Is knowing all of the words to Brooklyn's Finest going to help my credit score?  I doubt that. I'm not even from Brooklyn. I am sorry that his view of what truly being black boils down to is my taste in music, but I truly think that I should be able to blast Cher’s Walking in Memphis or Kes’ Savannah Grass in the car with my windows rolled down wIth zero judgment. 


Dear, B.L.U.N.T. Radio,

I have this cousin who is a dark-skinned black man🙎🏿‍♂️ (we’re just going to call him D.G.). Mind you, we have been raised in the hood and around O.Gs who know the game. From our uncles showing us how to shoot dice🎲 and dracos, to learning how to code switch from finessing white people with our Caucasian front to niggafying our personas. This nigga, however, has always been proven to be a coon. He calls himself, “White Chocolate” when he’s blacker than the vanilla bean itself. He hangs around white people all the time and uses his black friends as his token friends to prove that he doesn’t have self-hatred against his own kind. Honestly, I think this man was born from a coon-a-copia with a coon chip implant that activates every time his “Massa button” is pushed. 


When we were younger, D.G. used to tell me that he didn’t like black women because they didn’t like him for being a nerd who likes anime (the irony being that the rest of us are big nerds who have anime watch parties and will give these hands out for the free for anyone that tries us). Like nigga, if you just a musty bitch who couldn’t fight, just say that💁🏾‍♀️. He would say shit like, “Black women are loud and ghetto and always cause drama.” Whenever I confronted him about it, he would say some shit like, “Oh but you’re different”. I was literally the antithesis of loud, ghetto, and in the middle of drama. 💁🏾‍♀️How Sway?! How?💁🏾‍♀️! I used to hate walking around and being around this boy because his brother didn’t want to leave him behind whenever we went somewhere. I still have not forgiven him for the time he snitched on me and his brother for jumping the white kid who called us the N word because he said, “You can’t fight fire with fire.”🔥


D.G.’s brother and I were talking about him the other day because D.G. has been trying to get in contact with me over the years, but I’ve blocked that man on every communication platform there is, including the house phone. He’s been telling me that his brother has a child and that he wants to bring the kid around to know his cousins and before you ask, yes, the child is a zebra-breed🦓. No offense, but fuck him and that coffee and cream ass child☕. I am not about having a family reunion with his Coon-Platoon🦝. That ain’t my prerogative. I told my cousin that Hazelnut Macchiato Jr. and his Cookie-wannabe-Creme ass daddy are not my family. All my relatives are black and I do not consider them as family.


So my question is, should coons even have a black card in the first place?


Dear B.L.U.N.T Radio,


My family stay roasting me because I don’t really like soul food like that anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I fuck with some fried chicken and I ain’t never saying no to some mac n cheese but chitlins? Slavery is over, why we still eating that shit? And yo, what the FUCK is a gizzard? Why would I wanna eat something that sounds like a lizard dick? And don’t get me started on fucking potato salad. My auntie stay talm bout some “My potato salad is the best in the family.” I told her “Blink twice if white people gotchu held hostage?” Now my family mad at me because I think you gotta be in the Sunken Place to want to eat potatoes, eggs, mayo and whatever the fuck else is in potato salad. 


Not only that, soul food is mad unhealthy. Like damn, we really gotta put a whole ass pig in the collard greens? That shit prolly ain’t got no nutrients in it. I saw my grandma make yams and she put so much damn sugar in it. Is this bitch tryna kill us with the BETES? Ima lose a whole ass leg eating that shit.


At Thanksgiving my family almost sent me to the kids table all because I said pumpkin pie ain’t that bad. On God, all I said was that I don’t really like sweet potato pie and my cousins almost swung on me. Honestly, I’m just tryna eat healthier. I cut pork out my diet and now my family think I’m a tree-loving vegan who makes my own oat milk. First of all, oat milk is fire and why the hell do I want cow titty milk? Bitch I’m human not jumping over the moon. 


They don’t think it’s hard for me to let pork go? Collard greens are my favorite but I couldn’t eat it on Thanksgiving or Christmas because they prolly put a whole ass pig foot up in that bitch. Hell nawwwww. Not no more. This year I helped my auntie make the mac n cheese and she put so many damn cheeses in there. How I’m sposed to eat that mac n cheese and not have high cholesterol? Now I gotta eat Cheerios and shit because niggahs always overdoing shit. 


I told my cousin that next year I might, mind you I said MIGHT, make some vegan cornbread next year. Tell me why this bitch started flamin’ my ass? She gon say “How you going vegan and still fat?” “This bitch built like the Grinch talm bout some vegan cornbread. You built like a whole ass ice cream cone. Three scoops headass” “Yo bad built bitch ass bet not bring some nasty ass cornbread to grandma house, I’ll beatcho ass.” “You need to not worry bout no damn cornbread and focus on getting some bread. You the brokest bitch in the family. Niggah can you even afford to be vegan?” “How you don’t eat pork and you built like Wilbur? Charlotte’s Web headass!” 


All my cousins started laughing and shit. Niggahs was holding they stomach dying from laughter. Niggah, I almost cried. They started talm bout I’m not black no more. Bitch how I’m not black when my cousin Tanavius give his white friend the n-word pass? Anyway, am I less black because I may not want that unhealthy ass soul food no more? 

Hey B.L.U.N.T Radio,

Lemme tell you how my black card got revoked for at least three school years.

Something amazing but also terribly sad about the black experience is how we spin our trauma into comedy. Generations of abuse has shaped our people into thick skinned warriors. I guess that part of black evolution missed me. I’m sensitive as fuck. My feelings get hurt all the damn time but shit I know wasn’t meant to be offensive.

Tell how one time in high school, at the end of the year our teacher let us reenact Yo Mama. For the youngins out there, Yo Mama was a tv show on MTV where people would roast each other. It was literally an insult competition and you got paid if you won. So, from jump this wasn’t a good idea. How the hell you gonna let high school kids, going through puberty and discovering their identities and shit make fun of each other? Like bullying don’t kill people? Like kids don’t shoot up schools for getting rejected for prom. Anyway, the whole class loved the idea. Yo Mama is fun to watch on tv. Emphasis on the on tv part. My sensitive, cry about everything ass had no business roasting anything that wasn’t a chicken. Still, when the teacher asked for volunteers, I raised my hands on some “I ain’t neva scurrd” shit.

What’s crazy is our teacher put me up against the only white guy in the class. Probably because he knew I was a huge crybaby! Either way, the ONLY white guy. He had that long hair that always looked wet, glasses, and wore shirts that was way too big. Swore up and down I could handle this dude! When I tell you, this guy drug me through the mud, snow, street, and fire. Hit me from all angles. Told me to rub salt on my eyebrows cuz they look like slugs. Told me he can calculate the value of slope on my crooked ass hairline.

But see, I stood my ground the whole time. Kept my cool and tried being as gangsta and I could. Then this kid pulls a,

“Yo class y’all know why this guy so short?” Like a choir the whole class responded in perfect unison “Nah why?” I shoulda held my breath for what was not.

“His parents are so broke, they can’t afford for him to get new clothes, so he evolved to stay small and wears the same old clothes every year.”

 I think my heart skipped a beat but I couldn’t hear over the roar of laughter. The levels. The intricacy. The precision of the roast. Not only was I a midget, I came from a broke family and had old clothes. I could feel all confidence I thought I had snail inside of myself.

 For the rest of the year I was cracked on for being the short broke nigga who got served by the white kid. Not gonna lie, I still got a little PTSD. I’d like to point out that since then, I’ve perfected my roasting skills and niggas won’t catch me sleeping. Am I still invited to the cookout? Sometimes I don’t know.


The Blunt Space Contributors

We are the people behind The Blunt Space, a media hub and nonprofit for arts, advocacy, and culture.

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