I mean, beyond black twitter threads-esque reduction, many black americans don't share this experience. I lived an upper middle class life attending private schools, so the narrative people carry around about "true black people grew up in the hood!" is kinda just stupid. There's really no one way to be anything.
Denying people of their own identity (not talking about people shoving it onto people) will never make sense.
The fact that you feel this strongly about it even though I never once said:
- you weren't black
- the only real black people live in the hood
- you're not black if you went to private schools
Because the part of Barack's upbringing most black folks can't identify with is:
- having a white mother
- traveling worldwide
so your reaction about schools and neighborhoods means you have some personal demons you need to work out about your relationship to your own blackness that has nothing to do with this conversation. You're just triggered because someone who has never been for black people no wants our support and you're feeling like you might be cast out the same way because you have complicated feelings around embracing your blackness.
Don't respond to this copping pleas about how you were teased by black people about being black and that's why you feel a way. I don't care, it's 2019, most teasing, like crime, happens intraracially, so whine about it to a therapist or to your white friends, I frankly don't care that you haven't learned to love yourself yet tbh.
