Thread by @beingbrina

All these calls to Trust Black Women has triggered a *very* specific form 2016 Resistance PTSD.

I just got a pit in my stomach remembering all the requests from “well-meaning” white people to pick my brain for ideas on “how to help” for their well-funded projects or startups.

It was all so performative and extractive.

I remember one of these was from YCombinator. I remember how the only time I could make talking to her work for me was while I was shuttling my nephew to tiny tiger taekwondo (he’s a black belt!)

Most of our convo was unremarkable except the end when she told me the proposed name for her thing and I was like RED FLAG 🚩 RED FLAG 🚩 RED FUCKING FLAG 🚩: THAT NAME IS TRANSPHOBIC AS FUCK.

“YOU CAN DO OR NOT DO WHATEVER YOU WANT BUT I WOULD NOT CALL YOUR THING THAT.”

I remember this part so well because when I got off the phone my nephew was like “What’s transphobic?” and I was like— Auntie is HERE for this teaching moment, gather round boys, girls and gender expansive kids!

Later this dummy messaged me to say she was sorry she offended me and referenced making me angry at the end of our conversation.

I was *so thoroughly confused* because I wasn’t angry at all and I did not respond angrily.

TBH, I was mainly relieved I was not a dummy about to name my well-funded startup something offensive!

My brain: “Glad I’m not you!” 🤷🏽‍♀️

After that convo, I went back to my life and back to winning...

I pride myself in being a very clear and direct communicator.

If I am angry, I will be the first person to tell you so.

It is my pet peeve in life when idiot randoms who do not know me try to assign me feelings.

That period of time was so gaslighting— navigating people taking up SO MUCH SPACE who actually did not care but just wanted to ask a Black woman for her expertise to be ****perceived as if they were caring***

There is a huge, massive difference.

I am a Black feminist. I believe in abundance.

There is enough space for everyone! We need many people working on many solutions across a continuum! Even dummies!

But there are limits for this space *in my life* — that limit is zero.

I have a standard. I rock with excellence.

And this was not my first rodeo with the stark fun house mirrors distorting intentions with perception vs. reality.

The time before this was with dummy men in the wake of #MeToo

But this 2016 Resistance PTSD was more corrosive to my soul and spirit.

I felt as if I was constantly being ‘okie-doked’ by people who “just want to help” but who actually did not care about helping. Or equity. Or justice. Or liberation.

They just wanted to feel as if they were “doing something”🙄

And when I pointed out the moral gaps to solve for in whatever they were trying to “do” 🙄

(an expertise I am actually paid to do for my actual fucking job)

They would gaslight me and angry Black woman me.

Then they would ignore my advice, trash my character/reputation to shared mutuals (often our intro points), go do whatever they were going to do, fail, flame, in crisis get boomeranged BACK to me via our mutuals, try to hire me, I would decline because I don’t work for dummies...

... only for them to *again* trash me and call me an Angry Black Woman.

and before you do too, I want to contextualize that yes— I am calling them dummies on here (hey, if the shoe fits!🙃) but my declines *to them* were always respectful.

Because I am not an idiot.

The whole toxic dynamic speaks to really ugly fragility and this gross sense of entitlement to Black women.

It speaks to this ignorance to how much people like me sacrifice to show up in spaces.

Do you think I want to be on the phone with you telling you your stupid startup is transphobic?

No.

I’d rather be spending time with my family or doing quite literally anything else.

The same dynamic played out in June during #BlackLivesMatter uprisings— this deluge of performative, extractive, entitled requests/demands all from people who do not actually care for me, are not invested in me and my work and zero intention to help me build for a better world.

That’s cool if that is how they wished to show up in This Moment but I am busy and doing work and I am not here to fake the funk.

I cannot pretend and I cannot unring the bell.

There is way, if you are sincere, to engage me. I am a human being. You can treat me like one.

In June, I mentioned to @nilofer how deeply painful these extractive exchanges are— how it was always from takers, never from people seeking to use their power to help me build power.

There is a difference. I know the difference. You know the difference, too.

The difference is Marilyn Monroe using her power to successfully lobby the night club owners to book Etta James to perform, when it was hard for Black women to get good gigs. She promised the club owners she’d seat in the front table if they did.

How are you living the difference?

How are you using your power to help other people build power?

I mentioned this to @nilofer who tells me she wrote about this *exact* example in @harvardbiz in 2013.

It is here! google.com/amp/s/hbr.org/…

And now! A gift for you since this is a very unexpectedly long thread (and I am supposed to be doing other writing...)

Here is @beyonce performing Etta James’ “At Last” for Obama’s Inaugural Ball in the sweeter, simpler times of 2009...

So in June, I created this landing donation page for the what-can-I-do’s.

The right folks got it. The fragile entitleds did not and tried to enroll me in their shame spirals.

I respectfully declined.

secure.actblue.com/donate/bold-im…

There are gifts I am grateful for from 2016’s hellscape, it’s these:

1) the ability to spot extractive clowns from several football fields away

2) the manner I’ve become exceptionally better with boundaries.

3) the expansive joy I feel getting to build with the *right* folks

I am far from perfect but I do not take life for granted.

I am grateful to do what I do but I am most proud to be the woman I always wanted to be with fresh grace for myself for when I face the harshness of world that is simply not ready for more like me yet.