‘You’re The One Giving It More Meaning Than It Has’: Dealing with a White Friend’s Racial Ignorance
By Cassia Clarke
Although I am well versed in strangers spouting their racial ignorance in my face, experiencing it from someone I once considered a friend was emotionally draining. To finally draw a line and start anew after a tumultuous time, I write this essay to unpack the year I spent with an emotionally illiterate and racially ignorant friend. Let’s call her Sophie.
Sophie and I initially made contact through Facebook during the pandemic. I was entering my first year while Sophie was in her second of university, and we were living in the same flat in student accommodation. It was extremely refreshing after enduring the first UK lockdown with the same faces. When moving day finally arrived, I was anxious but very excited to finally meet her in person. Everyone says never meet your heroes; they are sure to disappoint. Sophie was not my hero, but she was someone I held in high esteem. It did not take long for the cracks to unveil themselves.
Sophie’s father is multiracial, and her mother and stepfather are white. She has spent the predominance of her life in white company – she is a white passing woman. She labels herself an ally of the Black community, but it is evident that Sophie has never truly checked herself for her own racial ignorance, and as a result many have experienced the brunt of it.
As a Black British woman, I have experienced my fair share of racial hate, indifference and fetishisation. Sophie’s racial ignorance began to emerge in the form of hair: after confiding in her about my experiences with unwanted touching of my hair by white women, she proceeded on multiple occasions to make inappropriate comments and even touch my hair. I confronted her. She told me, via text, ‘I will disregard the existence of this book (this is in reference to Emma Dabiri’s ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ – a book I introduced her to) every time you have beads in your hair (crying with laughter emoji).’
To Sophie, this could have been a little joke. For me, it became another white woman enacting their supposed entitlement over my body. It was this comment that birthed my conceptual documentary project, ‘Now I Am Uncomfortable’, which focused on reimagining macro/micro words and/or actions in photographic form. Sophie’s inability to comprehend the implications of omitting her position as a white woman, who flagrantly infringed on my boundaries, set the tone for our friendship. It was hair that proved to be the straw that broke the metaphorical camel’s back.
Sophie’s proximity to Blackness became her shield of defence from criticism. Exhibit B: proudly and unprovoked, Sophie expressed that her ‘mixed’ boyfriend (Sophie’s boyfriend is apparently mixed with English, Irish and Scottish) and her could produce a baby darker than me. I would describe myself to be wavering closer to the line of dark brown on the Black people skin colour scale, and I was dumbfounded by such a comment. It soon became apparent that I could possibly be fulfilling the Black friend trope, to which I vehemently denied at first but now I was not so sure.
The sassy Black best friend in the media is a popular trope used as a secondary character to support the main white character. It is tokenistic. I became the sounding board for Sophie’s performative wokeness and allyship. I solidified her need to validate her closeness to Blackness and therefore bore the brunt of her racial ignorance and emotional illiteracy. It was this role as a secondary character that allowed Sophie to cry racism, but I couldn’t without being branded as an angry Black woman.
The argument between Sophie and me that ended our friendship arose from an Instagram tag. Sophie expressed her distaste for dreadlocks after I voiced my desire to loc my hair. In an attempt to change my mind, Sophie tagged me in a video of a young Black woman with long, thick twist extensions. According to her, it was an innocent suggestion of a potential hairstyle choice, but after the mountain of times Sophie disregarded my feelings concerning my hair, it became another form of entitlement.
Before reacting, I sought the opinion of others who knew of our history together to ensure I was not parading around with the ‘angry Black woman’ crown with my response of annoyance. Countering my reaction to the tag, Sophie gaslighted my perspective as an overreaction, a retort I predicted and prepared for. In the aftermath, Sophie’s surprise of an apology centred herself without any true attempt to understand the complexities or implications. It was defensive and deflective. Sophie lost a friend; I lost a piece of my sanity.
‘You’re the one giving it more meaning than it has’ – a line from Sophie’s retort – culminated our friendship. It became apparent that her failure to check herself would always result in my perspective being demonised. It is a lesson learnt: friends should not be gifted with leniency, and you should always put yourself and your sanity first.