We Hate Macon

Being one of two black girls in an English class that's reading a book about race and appropriation is an experience that I wouldn't say is particularly enjoyable. It's all too commonplace here at Uni though- being one of few or the only black person in a class. What makes it even less fun is that because I am mixed, white people often choose to forget that I am not any less of a black woman for that. Angry Black White Boy by Adam Mansbach discusses the gray lines of white ally-ship, which can be a difficult conversation.

A lot of people want validation that they are indeed Not Racist and are "good white people" or such. Mansbach challenges this idea in saying that white people should be criticizing their whiteness openly as opposed to looking for ways to deny it. But often when discussing the book, I see white people in the class pushing whiteness off of themselves before they criticize whiteness. And this is essentially what made the class dislike Macon.

Macon talked about being “blacker” than the students at the BSU and more radical than John Brown and he had a lot of rhetoric that was intended to separate himself from white people. Being “down for the cause” doesn't take away your white privilege. It doesn't make you no longer a part of the power structure that constantly minimizes and oppresses people of color.

It felt almost as if the non-black majority of the class was reading the book and looking down on Macon for all the wrong reasons. People see him as an extreme (which obviously he is) and criticize based upon that but I think part of Mansbach’s intent was to show that Macon-esque thoughts are not at all uncommon. Few people go around robbing people in cabs and organizing Days of Apology, but it's not uncommon for people to speak about having or wanting to have an “honorary black card” or permission to say the n word because they're somehow different from other non black people and the rest of the white supremacist power structure.

We have a class full of Not Racist, rap listening, liberal non black people. And while there's nothing wrong with being any or all of those things, at times it can feel like an army of less extreme Macons and then the two black girls in the class.