Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams

He’d gone to boarding school with James and was adopted by white parents, which I think you can tell quite quickly by the way he publicly ridicules anything resembling black culture and carries his mute blond girlfriend around like she’s some sort of symbolic rite of whiteness.

As a writer, and mainly, as a person, I’m pretty obsessed with people. I began to meet men like this in my early twenties, and was so amazed by the way they’d distance themselves from me even though I was the only other Black person in the space. I used to think it was weird until I realized it was a them problem, and that assimilation into white culture can take many forms. Especially self rejection. I thought it was important to note that, basically, if you’re Black, you’re Black. Proximity to whiteness isn’t going to change that. Sorry!