Thread by @IEMcElroy

When I was in middle school, one of the white girls in my class decided we had beef. One week she decided she wanted to fight me so she told half the class who then told me. That day at lunch I watched as she shadowboxed with at one end of the yard. /1

As I finished my lunch and walked to the basketball hoops, one of my classmates told me she wanted to fight me after school. I said “bet, tell me the time and place” to which they said sh told everyone she was going to “beat my ass” /2

I laughed and said “Aite, she don’t the half of what I can do to her but aite see her after school” and then I went and proceeded to play pickup the rest of lunch with the boys. I made sure to keep one eye on her though to make sure I wouldn’t get jumped at lunch. /3

But here’s where the story gets interesting - during class after lunch, this girl has a massive meltdown and starts crying. Our teacher takes her outside and she tells the teacher that I was threatening to jump her after school. So of course I get sent to the principals office /4

As the principal starts verbally undressing me for “threatening” this girl I casually explain that in fact she had started all of this and was sending my classmates after me. Next thing I hear is a banging on the principals door and it’s the girls mom /5

She comes in guns blazing saying I needed to be suspended or expelled and how unacceptable it was to have “such a violent girl in her daughters class”. I excused myself from the room because I felt physically threatened by the mother yelling at me. /6

At this point the secretary calls my mom in (thank god). My mom spent an hour in the office with the girls mom and my principal while I sat in the office doing my classwork and the girl was back in class with her friends probably telling them I was out. /7

This basically took up the rest of the afternoon and since my mom didn’t want to have to come back to get me in 45 minutes she took me home then. In the car she told me she knew it was all bs but I still had to write an apology note. When I asked why she said /8

“Mani the one thing I can tell you in life, if you make a white girl cry, as a Black girl you will always be seen as the aggressor and they will find a way to punish you. This letter was what I negotiated to stop you from getting suspended.”

I was irate. /9

I wrote the damn letter but also made sure to listen to my mom and gave this chick a wide birth. Unfortunately for me I spent the next 3 years being targeted by my teachers and principal. At one point I was next in line for editor of the newspaper, spent all 3 years on staff /10

When suddenly the same girl who had threatened me 2 years earlier “needed more extracurriculars for her hs applications” but had never been on the newspaper became the editor. I didn’t have to worry because “i had sports” I went home that day and lost my shit. /11

So why am I telling y’all this story? I’m telling y’all as an example of how white women weaponize their tears and it can do significant harm to Black people. I didn’t feel the need to list all the ways my teachers and the school targeted me because that’s not the point /12

The point is for 3 years of my life I was belittled, bullied, and stifled by grown ass adults because I had the nerve to make a white girl cry. Academically, I obviously recovered. But emotionally, those scars still influence how I interact with people to this day /13

Young Black kids learn to shrink, suppress, and hide themselves in school. We learn that we don’t get to make mistakes, be rowdy, or even defend ourselves. We are a threat before we hit puberty. So when I say: white women tears are a weapon of mass destruction /14

I mean they destroy lives physically and emotionally. And just like Black children are taught to run and hide, white children learn the power they have over us. Accountability for their actions is an exception not the rule. While punishment for us is the rule not the exception /x