On Blackness and Being A Team Player

Being Black is being told you're not a team player for not allowing a workplace to place a metric ton of work and stress on your shoulders while you watch your “affable” co-workers of pallor do the barest of bare minimums while being lauded as great people.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you don't want to participate in work parties and picnics and prefer doing your job, doing it well, then going home to live the life you've worked so hard to create in a white supremacist capitalist society.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you have boundaries that you enforce and reinforce with co-workers who have none.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you don't want to be friends with every person of pallor in your office looking to capture a “Black friend” to co-sign their racist nonsense.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player and being subjected to oppressive actions and attitudes in the workplace that aim to break you and push you into assimilation or conformity as a fraudulent means of survival.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player so much that you start wondering if it's your name.

But real talk?

Being Black eventually comes with the realization that most of y'all don't know what a team player is because y'all are too busy being mired in the nonsense of white supremacist likeability politics.

But you know, keep telling Black folx we’re not team players while we're some of the only ones scoring points for the team.

On Pokemon and Fake Friendships for Clout and Emotional Heavy-Lifting

I used to think that telling people of pallor and melanated folx raised by and in communities of pallor to make friends outside of their culture was sound advice. But the older I get, the more I think this is the kind of advice that should only be given after a thorough vibe check because some of y'all are out here on some Ash Ketchum sh—.

So many of y'all willingly miss the concept beyond the advice: to expand your understanding of cultures and communities outside of what you've been raised in and exposed to while addressing and dismissing the toxic stereotypes, phobias, and isms that you're accustomed to. The goal is to learn, unlearn, and evolve as a person, not collect ‘em all for brownie points and false credibility among those you exchange virtue signals with. The goal is to be a better person by unpacking how your ignorance of other cultures and identities has done harm and to do better, not finding a bunch of melanated folx to “befriend” who will hopefully absolve you of your guilt and do your emotional heavy lifting.

That's not friendship.

That's indentured servitude.

And frankly, my patience is too thin, my intelligence is too high (you do know that we know what you're doing, right?), and my ass is too phat to fit in your Pokeball.

And trust me, I know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

“Pharoah used, ‘Nah, I'm tight.’ It's super-effective!”

A Thursday Tip

Hey, y'all! Happy Thursday! It's y'boy, Pharoah, with a Thursday tip for the people of pallor who follow me on this platform.

When y'all ask Black and Brown folx, Indigenous folx, and people of color in general if something you said or did is racist?

Yes.

The answer is always yes.

You don't even have to ask the question. Why?

Because if you're honest with yourself, you already know the answer is yes.

If you have to ask yourself that question, then take the question on the road to get a second opinion from a melanated person you know; the answer is an emphatic yes.

Heck, it's in many respects a racist act even to ask a person of color if you've done or said something racist and expect them to absolve you of your guilt or provide emotional labor for you as you grapple with your perpetuation of white supremacist ideologies.

You're not as naive as you think you are about this.

You know.

On Cats, Dogs, Lies, and Hate

I watched a man who believes he should be President again, and who should've never been President in the first place, angrily shout that Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets in Ohio and that a town in Colorado is overrun and controlled by "terrorist gangs" during a presidential debate last night.

These are, of course, xenophobic and racist dog whistles steeped in fear-mongering and stereotypes, but the danger these kinds of comments pose to Black and Brown folx, to immigrants, cannot be stressed enough.

What that caricature of a man did last night is a white supremacist control tactic as old as time that has harmed generations of melanated folx and immigrants in Western society. The problem is that here we are, in the year of someone's lord, 2024, watching a nationally televised event that received international coverage with a man of pallor whose only skill in life is generating fear to gain power and who has millions of followers ready to eat it up like it's the gospel who truly believe immigrants and melanated folx are a clear and present danger to their families, communities, and evidently, pets when they are the least likely sections of the citizenry to commit crimes and less likely to commit violent crimes.

But who needs facts when you can vilify melanated folx? Your grandpappy did it, and your pappy did it, so why not you too?

These hateful "fables" don't pass the sniff test.

But nothing has to pass the sniff test when your race has been collectively raised and bred for generations to believe that anyone who has melanin in their skin is a threat to "white democracy."

On Mass Shootings, Safety, and the Quietly Loud Voice of U.S. Power

If you live in the United States, you live in a country where we couldn’t even get to the second whole week of school for our children before our first mass school shooting.

Just in case you needed a reminder that the people who make decisions in the United States do not care about the safety of children and the defenseless.

And real talk?

Why do you need a reminder?

With everything that has transpired with this country’s collusion with ongoing genocides in Palestine and countless other countries you shouldn't need any reminders of how those in power in the United States view the value of human lives.

But thoughts and prayers and “solidarity” flag emojis, eh?