I was hanging with some friends when I saw one of them looking at these tweets that all had “#WhitePeopleEquivalent”. I thought, “Let me see what this shit is.” Apparently, a white woman decided to offer a helping hand to Black Girl Dangerous and write about LGBT experiences in the black community. UM- NO! Or, “hell no” as Mia McKenzie told her.

It’s one thing for a white person to listen to your stories about your battles with oppression and then recognize within their own lives how they are an element of that equation. But it’s another thing for them to have the nerve to want to “think” like us and “speak” for us. How is that even possible? YOU WILL NEVER BE US!

Here we have a case of white paternalism. They think, “Because I understand you, I want to help you.” All that translates to is, “I don’t think you can make it through this without my help. Here’s a better solution to your problem.” What white paternalistic people don’t understand is that THEY ARE THE PROBLEM. When white people offer their bodies to our fight for freedom and their mouths to our mediums of expressions, they don’t understand the way it makes a conscious black intellect feel; they get mad when we reject them and criticize them for attempting to be MOMMY AND DADDY. They expect us to just get over our history and act like race does not mean anything anymore. White people want us to stop looking at them as the offender and see them as a savior – an ally. And that’s the shit that gets to me! You can be my friend if you’re white. You can come to my house, eat my food, even sit on my couch. But at the end of the day, you will still be white and I will still be black.

White people go into other communities and try to fix what they broke and most times we just let them. Their help only hurts us more. It makes us lazy. It keeps us preoccupied with everything but strategizing to save ourselves. It makes us stupid.  The solution to the plight of black folks in America can only be found by BLACK FOLKS THEMSELVES. Just like we can eat for ourselves and walk for ourselves, we must learn how to think for ourselves and talk for ourselves if we really want to be free.

White people will read this article and interpret it as reverse racism. History does not change nor does it stop for the present. The present is history and the history is present. So when a white person offers their mouth for my voice, I will decline the gesture, because it is not a helping hand but a direct expression of ignorance. White people can try all they want to make up for what “they didn’t technically do”, however, black people will continue to suffer from the oppression our ancestors endured at the hands of white people. We will continue to search for an escape from the systemic inequalities that leave us powerless because of the color of our skin. I don’t hate white people. I just don’t need them to translate my struggles into their ignorance for the sake of “trying to understand.”