I’m not scared to be judged. At all. I don’t care about that, I care about the outcome of being judged. And that is absolutely connected to race, sorry for bringing that up again people of color. Y’all know.
Try to say to Trayvon and Jordan’s parents that chances are nothing will happen if you simply stand up. I triple dare you. They stood up. They were not doing anything wrong, they were heavily being judged and didn’t care about that. They stood up.
And then they died, murdered. The reminder is with a black president at the White House, mortifying. Humiliating, 12 Years A Slave winning big doesn’t change anything.
I don’t care being judged on my online gaming skills, it’s just that I don’t want to read/hear anything about “dumb ass niggers”. I did, doesn’t taste great, feels gross, let’s move on. In the real world outside work, being judged feels like danger and my survival guts hate that.
The respect earned from you claiming your ground is based on a broken social system full of BS. When you’re black and especially a dude, you sort of have to not do that and please everyone in this white world otherwise you are immediately filtered out as “trouble” in inconsistent and twisted ways. It’s quite universal on this planet. You need to fit more than people respect you because they never will respect you entirely anyway, so used to ethnocentrism. You can also stay in your community forever, warm and miserable because nothing changes this way.
I don’t try to please everyone I try to make things work, everything I can. Let me do my thing. The part where I don’t give a fuck about what others think? Oh, it’s been done and done son.
The problem is not to not please everyone, it’s to not get fucked or worse killed in Florida for being yourself and harmless.