What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker

by Damon Young

And conspiracy theories about everything from AIDS (created by the government to stop African birthrates) and Magic Johnson (rid of HIV after he purchased the cure from the government) to Timberlands (the tree logo etched on every pair represented the lynching of black people) and Tommy Hilfiger (went on Oprah to explain why he didn’t want black people wearing his clothes) were considered verifiable facts.

But decent was (and is) a baseline. Decent was (and is) the threshold. Decent was (and is) a standard WordPress template. Decent was (and is) a practiced and careful passivity. You are decent, not because you do things that actually matter and actually help, but because you don’t do shit. Decent ain’t shit, really. Fuck decent. What mattered and still matters most is being worthy.

She shares my general philosophy about white people, which exists as a repetitious vacillation between bemusement, annoyance, fury, and pity, and is a vital core value for any appropriately aware black person to possess. Admittedly, this sounds quite a bit like racism. And perhaps it would be, if black people could be racist toward whites. (We can’t, btw. We can be prejudiced, but actual racism is bias plus power. The only “reverse racism” is when white people wear Confederate flag snapbacks backward.)