This Is Us
How to Lose a Friend Over One Racist Post
There comes a time when we can’t look the other way
I was falling in love the morning my grandma died. It was December 2017, and I was snuggled in bed with a woman I’d met just a few months before. We giggled and kissed under the comforter as we greeted the chilly Southern California morning together. When we finally broke apart to check our phones, I saw a Facebook message from a cousin simply announcing, “Grandma is gone.”
A week later, I sat in my aunt’s living room in Louisiana, surrounded by parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, and other kin. Fully hoping to escape the moment, I checked Facebook and saw post after post extolling the virtues of Black women. The night before, exit polls had revealed that Black women voters were instrumental in electing Doug Jones, a Democratic nominee for Alabama’s special Senate election.
“Black women saved us,” one post read.
“Black women are the reason Doug Jones won. Treat them with respect,” declared another.
After scrolling down a few more posts and seeing this sentiment repeated over and over, my heart sank.
I am a Black woman. And, for me, these posts felt like a punch in the gut. They inferred that I mattered as a means of…
