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REASON #606 FOR THE WHITE GAZE BAN

 Reason #606 for the white gaze ban: we use the same words but speak a different language. 


Progressive, Trump-hating, ICE hating, brutality-hating 

white folk would feel FREE to usurp my BLACK page 


with their narrative. And they would be ‘well-meaning’ about it because that is their litmus: ‘I don’t feel that my actions 


are gaslighting so therefore they are not’. Like when I’d mention being stopped by cops (in broad daylight for walking 


my then 6yr old son from school to my mom’s and then having to rush back to work in my work attire) because 


I FIT THE DESCRIPTION! They’d chime in about how they were stopped once coming out of a seedy dive 


in seedy attire late at night looking like Sid Vicious so they can relate! Of course, reason #607 is they’d demand 


the full numbered list of white gaze bans posted. And they’d be right. I make the #’s up as I go. 


But this goes back to using the same words but speaking a different language, since we ALL know that these reasons 


(while the numbers are made up) are ALL VALID! But because white savagery is well-meaning, 


they feel that it’s ok to throw their pithy narrative blanket over our pain and because they FEEL that it is ok then it is so. 


Only when I banned their comments did it begin to sink in for some that maybe this space should’ve been reserved for 


those needing to commiserate and grow. That unlike other platforms where their view and their mew mew platitudes  


are given the red carpet treatment, here their comments were an indicator that this is NOT a safe space 


for those intended. That maybe if they had decided to be a fly on the wall, they just might learn the extent 


of our struggle as others felt free enough to share their HORRORS of profiling and pain and be convicted!


It took me 10 years to do what should have happened day 1, but that’s just an indicator of how much I’m trained 


to respect their feelings and devalue our own. Another pleasant side-effect of the white gaze ban 


is that the Black folk who worship them began to see that their white gods (you worship whom you obey), 


if they can be banned, are really no gods at all and they began to think for themselves.


Can’t wait ‘til we have our own media. Everything changes.

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