The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I can recall a time I was online under a friends face book page. I was tagged in a post about all the killings happening where the police has killed black unarmed men. I was asked by this person to watch the video in which I told him, I couldn’t watch another video of a black man let alone any man being murdered by the police. So of course people started making comments not toward me just about how sad it was. I then told this person I’m praying for his family but watching those videos make me cry. Then this woman who I didn’t know at all said I was a  coward and need to be more black and stay woke. I never responded; she went on to say I’m a house “N-word”  because of my lighter complexion. I told her to have a blessed day, then she said people like me always look the other way in spite of things happening around me. Now this was another black woman making all these harsh comments, she was a darker complexion woman. For the life of me I always wondered why in the black community do some people compare skin complexions and think the lighter skinned people are better and darker complexion is less than. I read the last comment she wrote and I completely logged off. She said black sista you need to read slavery books right now because we’re headed that way because of black life people like you, people who look the other way when a injustice happen to yet another black man; it’s people like you that disgust me in every aspect of the black community, you will forever be on the side of the pig police who are killing our black men. I felt bad at first then I thought this lady is crazy for real, all this because I chose not to watch a video of someone being murdered. This same race prejudice brought up memories of when I was young and I had some cousins who were lighter skinned and some darker. I was in between which didn’t never make me a target of such harsh words. The cousins who were lighter always called the darker skinned cousins ugly and black when they got mad at one another.

I did inform that woman to have a blessed life and she need to pray to God she doesn’t continue to have that kind of attitude especially toward someone she doesn’t know at all, I told her I have the right to watch whatever I wanted to watch, it’s my choice if I want to watch a video of someone being killed. I told her there was no way I was going to watch someone lose their life and she could write that down in her black folks diary. I said you stay woke on more issues just not this particular issue.