Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes

by Phoebe Robinson

  Black people who encourage this kind of nonsense, stop. We don’t need to co-sign foolishness. For example, the whole “Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rolled up to the Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol to introduce new federal police reform legislation while rocking kente cloth in ‘solidarity with Black people’ ” fiasco. Lol. Wut?! WHY DIS HAPPEN? WHY WERE THEY SMILING THE WHOLE TIME WITH A “NAILED IT” ENERGY? WERE THEY NOT ON A GROUP SLACK WITH MAXINE WATERS AND CORY BOOKER, WHO COULD HAVE LET THEM KNOW THIS IS NOT THE MOVE? HOW DOES CAUCACITY TAKE NO DAYS OFF? Look, I know the Congressional Black Caucus provided the kente cloth as a symbol of working together to make change, but nah . . . Nance and Schooms can exist in their white experience and do them while Black people are in theirs, and the two groups can still find common ground. That’d be like if British Baekoff wanted to show his solidarity with my experience of having periods, so he’d shove a tamp-tamp up his urethra for five days. I’d be like, “ ’Kay. Doesn’t change the fact that I bleed and have horrible symptoms once a month. And now that you pulled this stunt, instead of me nursing myself with a heating pad, we gotta make a trip to urgent care, so there goes my Saturday!” Point is, we, as Black people, don’t need to be handing out ill-advised assistance so white people can assuage their discomfort, and white people need to use their critical thinking skills so that when presented with a bad idea, they can say, “I’m good. I’ll keep wearing my Talbots and Brooks Brothers suits and do the work instead of jumping at the chance to make an empty gesture.”

  Before I move on, we have got to talk about one more thing: ITakeResponsibility.org. It announced its arrival in a two-minute-plus video chock-full of and only featuring very privileged white actors who shot themselves exclusively in black and white like it’s a whack-ass French New Wave film to show they are “really sad and care deeply,” but not too deeply, because half of them are lifelessly reading off a sheet of paper.* It’s like they JUST REALIZED IN 2020 that racism, unchecked microaggressions, and Black people being murdered is HAPPENING and they want to now speak out because Black people are their neighbors (Bitch, where? Not your zip code), are their friends (lolz, I saw your Christmas party pictures you posted on social media, and the only Black people in attendance are faintly in the background, serving potato croquettes), and are their family (your immediate and extended family is literally just blond hair, blue eyes, and white skin, but go off on how we all fam). And [in infomercial announcer voice]: That’s not all!

  Some of them were wearing nonprescription Quay glasses to prove they’re serious. (Wild, mate! Get it? Because Quay is an Australian brand?) There was melancholy piano music playing in the background (I guess none of them know how to use GarageBand to compose a better score or use a free song that’s in the public domain). And when you go to the website, there’s a drop-down menu where you can select generic “boo-boos” you’ve committed, including but not limited to “saying ‘I don’t see color,’ ” “denying white privilege,” and “not being inclusive.” Then after you do that, you go to a second drop-down menu, where you can select an option on how you’re going to make it better, e.g., “demand police accountability” or “donate to families.” Really?! They out here giving the “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start” cheat codes on what racism is and how to do antiracism work? Noooooooo, biiiiiiiiiiitch. That’s lazy, trifling, and insulting to the antiracism educators, activists, organizers, and organizations who don’t have the luxury of using a crib sheet and instead must show up prepared with knowledge, lived experience, and a dedication to the cause because they understand the gravity that one false step in their execution means they will be disregarded and, more important, they grasp the severity of what it means for a society to build itself on the foundation of racism and white violence.

  Whew. I don’t know why, but I Take Responsibility in particular is the one that always gets me worked up. Even now, months later, as I’m writing this, I’m agitated, enraged, and absolutely confounded at the sheer audacity of its existence. That these celebrities heard but did not listen to what Black people wanted and raced to put together something so shoddy and tone-deaf. Actually, I take that back. I can think of several reasons why it upset me then at a guttural level and why it still does now.

  By June 2020, when this campaign launched, I felt emotionally and mentally drained. Watching yet another video of police murdering an unarmed Black person put me in a headspace that wouldn’t allow me to process celebrities “taking a stand” while saying nothing of substance. Then and now, the I Take Responsibility video is emblematic of how a movement can be co-opted by wealthy whites who are too concerned with optics instead of actually dismantling systemic racism in America and all over the world. When I laid eyes on that clip for the first time, it was on a day when I just wanted to go one hour without the bullshit. And seeing this video and its absurdity made me laugh until I cried on the phone with a friend and also infuriated me because this kind of self-flagellation happens time and time again and none of it is for Black people. And, in some way, these kinds of actions can make us feel even more alone and invisible. I know I probably shouldn’t speak on behalf of the entire Black community, but I’m pretty damn sure they would all agree with me that the video and #ITakeResponsibility initiative aren’t for us. This then raises the question of who they’re actually for.

  * * *

  Like most people, the events of summer 2020 were not only difficult to process, but made me examine my own life. Interracial dating during and post these uprisings, especially when the significant other is white and British aka Patient Zero, was tricky, heh. Certainly it was not a situation either British Baekoff or I could have prepared for, so at times, for me, it kind of felt like when you see those high school basketball bloopers where someone on the home team absentmindedly steals the ball from their teammate and then scores a basket for the away team. Not that I view my boyfriend as my opponent; he’s my partner always. However, I would be lying if I didn’t admit there were fleeting moments in which living through last summer while quarantining with a white person felt . . . strange. Like we weren’t on the same team because when we leave our home he is white and I’m Black. And I don’t mean this in some Pollyanna “We’re so in love that it never dawned on us that because of the color of our skin, racism could enter our love bubble” way. Rather, what I mean is that it’s one thing to have sociopolitical discussions with our respective families or vent my frustrations about a microaggression that transpired at work, but it’s another to spend several weeks together with a motorcade of NYPD vehicles patrolling up and down the street you live on at all hours of the day and night. And while they may claim that they’re just doing their job, I know the unsaid truth: Their presence was designed to make sure I didn’t feel completely at ease in my home or neighborhood, whereas to Baekoff, the motorcade was absurd and an abuse of power, but he did not fear for his safety, did not have paranoid ideations that maybe he’s next while making a cup of tea, and did not speculate if the police were doing the very same thing at that moment in his brother’s neighborhood, the way I did about my brother. All of these anxious thoughts I had were absorbed by my body on a molecular level, and they weren’t in Baekoff’s. And I wondered all the ways it would be different if they were.

  My curiosity didn’t stem from him doing something wrong. It’s as though this internal question of “what if” Immaculately Concepted me. Like, what if I were quarantining with a Black person? Would our bodies sync up so as to share the burden of the secondhand trauma we were witnessing? Every so often last summer I wanted—no, needed—to wake up, roll over, and be able to commiserate with another Black person. Share an oh-so-heavy exhalation with someone who just got it. BB didn’t. I mean, he saw the pain all over my face, but he didn’t know it. It wasn’t familiar and deep in the marrow. And instead of either of us fighting that reality, we accepted it. Not once did Baekoff ever try to do anything.
Never did he attempt to fix it all, and believe me, my baby loves to fix shit.

  Sometimes I catch him, shirtless and in shorts, just strolling up and down our apartment hallway like a principal after the first-period bell has rung, except Baekoff isn’t making sure students aren’t missing class, he’s checking to see if it’s time to re-caulk and seal the bathroom. I mean, who stays on standby for some routine caulking? Even the Property Brothers would tell him to calm the hell down. Anyway, British Baekoff loves making home repairs so much that every single time he bends over while fixing something, I get an eyeful of ass crack. And not just a sliver. It’s a hearty amount. Like the length of a golf pencil that you’d use to fill in the bubbles on a multiple-choice test. I swear, every time I see his ass crack, I flash back to freshman year of high school and a Beowulf exam. Jokes aside, I see this man’s ass crack all the time and I don’t know how that’s possible. He wears pants or shorts or underwear, yet it’s always . . . out. Like the neighborhood Black uncle who’s always on the porch and telling everyone to let their mom know he said hi. Between you and me, sometimes I won’t tell Baekoff if something’s broken around the apartment just so I can go ninety minutes without our Philips Hue lights refracting off his butt and blinding me. I can accept a lot of things in a relationship, but attacking me with a self-created solar eclipse made out of ass cheeks and Con Ed electricity when I don’t have my sunglasses handy is not one of them. I digress. The point is my man likes to fix things, because that’s his love language, but even he knew his helpful nature was no match for what summer 2020 wrought.

  So he followed my lead. Held me when I wanted to cry. Reminded me to take breaks from the news for my mental health. Listened when I needed to vent and stopped talking when I told him that I couldn’t have any more discussions about George Floyd on a particular day. And, even though he couldn’t go to marches with me because of the potential of him getting arrested, which would lead to his automatic deportation, he would check in via text frequently to see how I was doing and if I felt safe. When he didn’t understand something, he wouldn’t burden me with the task to teach him, but instead looked up the information to fill in the blanks. And most important, he didn’t post on social media or bring attention to himself so he could get virtual pats on the back. He did things privately, such as having one-on-one conversations with his mom and friends back in the UK. He made donations to various organizations and he didn’t even tell me about them half the time because, again, he wasn’t trying to get brownie points. In fact, the only reason I know this is because I’d walk past our office and see him on a bail-fund website, typing in his debit card number.

  I’m not sharing all this to show that my white boyfriend is the right kind of white boyfriend. It’s that he and I both knew that intangible limitation—he’ll never be able to fully understand what I and every Black person go through when these kinds of murders happen and are broadcast all over the world. He didn’t attempt to overcompensate, making sure I knew that he knew he’s one of the good ones. He did almost everything but center himself as a white savior who was previously ignorant, but is now all-knowing because he read two books and highlighted a bunch of pages. He was doing the bare minimum, which wasn’t cause for celebration and was what every white person, famous or not, should have been doing, on those days—and there were many. But it appeared these simple tasks were either inexplicably difficult for plenty of white people to do or, more accurately, were an option they lacked the presence of mind to realize even existed. Baekoff declined to participate in performative allyship, and that was a much-needed salve.

  Performative allyship or performative activism rose in popularity during the uprisings and protests following George Floyd’s murder, but the concept has been around for several decades. It was first featured in Barbara Green’s 1997 book about the Federation era of women’s suffrage in Australia, entitled Spectacular Confessions: Autobiography, Performative Activism, and the Sites of Suffrage 1905–1938. Other notable mentions were in 2015 articles for Hyperallergic, a Brooklyn-based arts mag, and Atlas Obscura, another online magazine and travel company. One Hyperallergic article examined the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and the tactics some of the women used to protest nuclear weapons: “They decorated [a] fence with pictures, banners, and other objects. They blocked the road to the site with dance performances. They even climbed over the fence to dance in the forbidden zone.”

  Hmm. Doing some Laurieann Gibson choreography—#BoomkackNaysh*—to show your objection to a social or political matter isn’t inappropriate or self-indulgent in and of itself. Art and movement can be a powerful tool for expression and something that can reflect the feelings of the masses. Keith Haring’s “Ignorance = Fear/Silence = Death” poster, Rosie the Riveter, and choreographer and Scripps College educator Suchi Branfman’s film Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic, which was a dance protest by people incarcerated at the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium-security state men’s prison in Norco, California, in response to a prison lockdown that left them in near 24/7 isolation with no change in the foreseeable future, are all examples that come to mind.

  However, what the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp did comes off as though they were using the nuclear weapons as a backdrop to have an arts-and-crafts day capped off by a performance. It not only screams “Pay attention to me and my demonstration,” as if highly visible “activism” is supposed to serve as evidence that they did their part, but it also says “My demonstration brings me pleasure.” Look, I’m not a purist who believes that antiracism work should be one giant, endless slog chock-full of misery, setbacks, and heartbreak. That’s not sustainable for anyone. I believe enjoyment can be an act of protest in a world that wants to exert power and crush folks under their thumbs. The problem is when the act of performing and the endorphin high that comes with it end up being the sole objectives, as opposed to a by-product of antiracist work.

  Jeff Ihaza, a writer for the now-defunct website the Outline, perfectly encapsulated this point when he wrote about performative allyship back in 2017:

  One of the most crippling tendencies of modern liberals is their obsession with being seen, whether it be at a protest wearing a fuzzy pink hat alongside Madonna or in viral tweets totally owning the president. This preoccupation with optics is more often than not frighteningly self-centered. . . . From “performative” activism to a fixation on clever protest signs, modern liberals know better than anyone else how to cash in on a political movement, but they know very little about how to harness the power of one.

  Although I’d take it a step further. Performative allyship is more than being keenly aware of the camera aka the world and presenting an idealized, if somewhat ineffectual, version of yourself. It’s also the pacification of the idea of whiteness, which means that by design, the work that is done is to soothe and protect whiteness, not dismantle it. Much like on sitcoms when a baby cries and a first-time parent quickly runs through options (“Bottle? No? Binky . . . that’s not it either? Okay. Want me to pick you up and walk around? Still not it. Shoot . . .”) and settles on whatever is the quickest solution to get the crying to stop and keep the baby safe (“Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo— Yes! It worked! Whoo! Oh, sorry. Less celebrating and more singing. Got it. Baby shark . . .”), the same holds true for performative allyship and whiteness.

  When the concept of whiteness is unsettled in myriad ways, ranging from progress via antiracism work to merely someone pointing out a microaggression, easy solutions such as Band-Aid brand, months after George Floyd’s murder, announcing their Band-Aids are going to be made in darker shades, or Matt James becoming the first Black Bachelor in the show’s franchise, are offered up by our so-called allies to make whiteness feel good that something has been done, while the policies and underlying structures remain mostly undisturbed so as to allow whiteness and its benefactors to maintain the status quo.