WORDS: MYLES E. JOHNSON | ART: FAYE ORLOVE
The best thing my mother did for me was to keep me away from white people and white culture for as long as possible. This was not an act of prejudice, but an act of preservation of her young black child.
She wanted to ensure my imagination was fully formed before encountering the daily delusion that is whiteness; that I would, of course, have to eventually interact with as a black person in America. I was born into a moment, for my mother, where she knew I could be a happy person but it would take strong discipline on her part to ensure her black child wouldn’t be broken beyond repair by systems designed to mold the natural wild black imagination into one of the complicit negro. I imagine if my mother was Margaret Garner, she’d snatch me out of the world as fast as she gave birth to me too. 1991 didn’t call for such an extreme decision, but she did snatch me out of the routine assimilation that a lot of black children are thrown into without warning and with many critiques from family and peers. It is because of this that I often feel like I am in the twilight zone when interacting with both black and white people. Delusions are entertained for longer than I think are appropriate and conversations are often these cyclical, purposeless debates about facts that were discovered decades ago.There has been a continuous conversation that has been happening around white womanhood and their complicity in white supremacist domination.Still, the most jarring invention that white supremacy has produced is the white woman. As dangerous as she is ridiculous, I am often astonished by the white woman who sees herself as a delicate flower as she smashes spaces and bodies like Godzilla. There has been a continuous conversation that has been happening around white womanhood and their complicity in white supremacist domination. White women are horrifying. Anyone who has seen Get Out or Django Unchained is at least mildly aware of the anxiety around the white woman who decides to weaponize the frail and vulnerable space she takes up in the white supremacist patriarchal imagination in order to annihilate the spaces and bodies of others. Again, the white woman is horrifying. It goes without saying that I keep my interactions with white people, including white women, limited. Not to be prejudiced, but to preserve my imagination and labor. I mean to live and serve myself first and foremost, not to be used by other people’s guilt or desires. This is why this week’s interactions with white women were special to me because they’d rarely happen in my little, black queer world.


I am reminded of Dana Schutz’s recent portrait of a dead Emmett Till and reminded that even white women with the desire to be radical still find themselves being incredibly violent.Grappling with these two atrocious moments of white womanhood that happened in the culture within 7 days of each other reminded me that the real radical job of people socialized into seeing themselves as white women is to un-detonate themselves. I am reminded of Dana Schutz’s recent portrait of a dead Emmett Till and reminded that even white women with the desire to be radical still find themselves being incredibly violent. They use their guilt as not only a way to re-traumatize black people, but also to profit which only perpetuates white supremacist capitalism, all under the guise of curiosity and expression. The real job of people socialized to identify themselves as white women is to know that every black space, every black conversation, every black body, and every black production they find themselves interacting with is a potential terrorist attack if not practicing self-awareness. To prevent this violence, there are two options: to carry a radical critical awareness in everywhere you find (and don’t find) yourself or mind your business.