What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker

by Damon Young

How else are you supposed to react when first learning about

redlining; when first reading about lynching; when first having gerrymandering and gentrification explained to you; when first studying the myriad and colossal racial disparities in everything from income to education; and when first encountering a white person intentionally oblivious to how being white in America is like being free to take an open-book exam on the same lesson materials that we weren’t even allowed to study for?

Ripping, by the way, is a Pittsburgh-area colloquialism for playing the dozens (also commonly known as roasting), which is often depicted in media and in conversation as an innocent and fun and funny and nostalgia-worthy aspect of black culture.

Ahaha. I remember ripping.

For many black American families, the dogged and grim pursuit of upward mobility—of the American dream being actualized instead of aspirational—cultivates a dynamic where performative mobility replaces actual mobility. This, of course, is a by-product of the historical constrictions and conditions placed on our financial ascension. Moving up the ladder from working poor to lower middle class, from lower middle class to middle class, and from middle class to upper middle class is possible. And it happens often enough that actively pursuing it can’t be dismissed as silly.

This is what I mean by blazing, honest truth.

White supremacy is so gargantuan and mundane that sometimes its existence and its proficiency can’t be measured, addressed, or even seen without a stark change in perspective. It isn’t like gravity. It is gravity. It is a ceaseless pressure intended to keep blackness ground-bound and sick.

Never heard such a good explanation of white supremacy.

It’s just that blackness in America meant that setbacks, like my parents getting their car stolen in 1990, were tsunamis. It meant that there were and would always be environmental factors they needed to overcome. It meant a permanent cushionlessness where tripping and falling left broken bones instead of bumps and bruises. It meant supporting and relying on an entire economy dependent on that perpetual vulnerability.

Yes. Families describe similarities to this daily to me.