The extraordinary (and growing) hatred of black women in the USA

When did it become ok to be so disrespectful?

This might shock you, dear reader, but I’m really fucking white. I’m so white that I’m pretty sure a good shade name for a grey-white on a Dulux colour wheel would be ‘Madelaine’. I’m so white I give chalk a bad name. My iron deficiency is remarkable. Beyond a few nasty comments on my hair type, eye colour and nose, I can honestly say I’ve never experienced any racially loaded abuse. ‘Race’ just isn’t something that really comes up that much in my social circle. I’m also very, very British, so my experience and understanding of American misogynoir is perhaps as limited as it possibly can be. And even I, thousands of miles across the pond and sitting here drinking tea, am absolutely aghast with the normalisation of sheer vitriol against American Black women. It’s not funny, it’s not normal, and it’s definitely not healthy.

I honestly don’t know how Black women can even stand it, because I’d be somewhere between sobbing under my bed and full on rioting. It’s so, so bad. It’s awful. It’s the most hateful, cruel, nasty rhetoric I’ve ever heard a population use about members of their own community. I’m not saying there isn’t also massive prejudice and racism against black women in the UK: but wow American Twitter, you knocked it out of the park. Kicking Black women on the internet seems to be back in vogue from all ethnicities, all political groups, all genders, and all demographics. There is, it seems, no…