BLACK WOMEN would you prefer to be female and white or black and male

[Sugarintheplum]

Ive asked this question to my black friends so many times, and they have ALL said black and male.

I recently heard an interview with Chimamanda Adichie and she said sexism stands at the forefront of her mind because she can experience it in her home (I paraphrase). When I have had this conversation with my black female friends they have said they'd prefer to stay black and just be male largely because they think race impacts their lives the most.

Now, I think I have only asked a white female friend this once, and she said black and female, and then she said it come to her mind quickly because she thinks black women have more fun! I really do wonder how the world sees us, because isn't this comment actually hilarious?! Where on earth does that idea come from?

What would you be? I really want to hear from black women. If you are white and cannot help yourself (though I hope you can refrain), please mention that fact because if you answer as though you are black it really doesn't allow us an understanding of black women's thoughts on this and that is what I am looking for, if indeed anyone does respond ;p

What would your response be? 😊

Ive asked this question to my black friends so many times, and they have ALL said black and male*

No way.

& I'm already a woman so I can't fathom wanting to be a different colour and race of women. I love myself. & I love my culture that's the most appropriated out there by far - because we are 'all that and more', aren't we?🙂

Would you rather be a penguin with no legs, or an eagle without wings?

That’s an interesting one but I’m white so can’t answer but have been thinking lately about how things really are for black young men in some areas.

I’ve noticed how some black males seem to be where I live, especially older teens...they seem very wary, as if they are expecting to be judged by others in a certain way and look relieved when you just walk past and don’t bat an eyelid because they’re in fact a perfectly ordinary, respectable person. I don’t think black girls experience this in the same way. But that wasn’t your question, it’s just something I think about.

At first with Black Lives Matter, I didn’t properly get it all because I grew up in a very multicultural area. But it’s made me so much more aware that not everyone thinks the way I do. If you watch how some people are, it’s really eye opening. Where I live now is still quite multicultural but there’s an undercurrent of narrow mindedness and fear among some of the families who have lived here for some time. What I would say is that I am definitely more wary of some of the young white youths around here - it’s to do with their upbringing

@SneezyGonzalez

That’s an interesting one but I’m white so can’t answer but have been thinking lately about how things really are for black young men in some areas.

I’ve noticed how some black males seem to be where I live, especially older teens...they seem very wary, as if they are expecting to be judged by others in a certain way and look relieved when you just walk past and don’t bat an eyelid because they’re in fact a perfectly ordinary, respectable person. I don’t think black girls experience this in the same way. But that wasn’t your question, it’s just something I think about.

At first with Black Lives Matter, I didn’t properly get it all because I grew up in a very multicultural area. But it’s made me so much more aware that not everyone thinks the way I do. If you watch how some people are, it’s really eye opening. Where I live now is still quite multicultural but there’s an undercurrent of narrow mindedness and fear among some of the families who have lived here for some time. What I would say is that I am definitely more wary of some of the young white youths around here - it’s to do with their upbringing

I just seeing posters who openly wade into conversations not targeted at them with "I'm white so can't answer..." and then proceed to throw their (unwanted, unasked for) opinion in.

Just walk on by next time.

MrWendel hmmm well I don’t see anyone else answering 😂

FWIW I really don’t think MN is the place for a “black only” thread, or anywhere else for that matter.

@SneezyGonzalez

MrWendel hmmm well I don’t see anyone else answering 😂

FWIW I really don’t think MN is the place for a “black only” thread, or anywhere else for that matter.

I guess because MN is primarily a UK-based site and it is currently 3.50am might give some insight into the lack of traffic. On your second observation, I have no comments.

"Ive asked this question to my black friends so many times, and they have ALL said black and male."

Have they really... I find that so incredibly hard to believe. I'm very happy being a black woman. I was born in a small village in sub saharan Africa (saw white people for the first time in a refuge camp I was taken to after my whole family was killed by revolutionaries during a civil war) and later was taken to South America, to a very multicultural metropolis. Only then I experienced real poverty - surrounded by people of all skin colours. I still see the world divided by education / opportunities, not by race / gender. I was able to escape poverty but what made the most impact on my happiness were (and still are) the human connections, all the lovely people I came across, some become my friends (and family). Dont see my gender or race as something that I wish I could "escape from" (have no desire to be anyone else).

Actually I find your question bizarre. But lately I'm seeing MN with different eyes. I suspect many provocative questions here are written by MN staff disguised as ordinary users, to generated traffic. Is your question genuine or not? I have no idea... I should just stop wasting my time here, that how I see this site - major time wasting.

MrWendel
I guess because MN is primarily a UK-based site and it is currently 3.50am might give some insight into the lack of traffic. On your second observation, I have no comments

I answered but somehow that was missed, hmmm

Love your user name, sign of good taste in music 😁

It's not a conversation I have ever had with friends or family - IRL I'm not sure I'd be engaged with the question, especially not with white women.

I like being a Black African woman. I have no desire to be anything else. Being black African and being a woman are both important to me and I cherish them both.

@Nnovember

It's not a conversation I have ever had with friends or family - IRL I'm not sure I'd be engaged with the question, especially not with white women.

I like being a Black African woman. I have no desire to be anything else. Being black African and being a woman are both important to me and I cherish them both.

Agree - I can't get my head around this hypothetical question really (or the value of it). I wouldn't want to sacrifice my womanhood nor my heritage.

I don't think we can equate or trade-off sexism nor racism that easily.

Yes, it's a hypothetical silly-ish question, not literally meant 'what would you willingly change?'

When I have been asked this question in this silly haha chats with friends, it has usually started out 'black men really do have it hard', then 'I'd find it so hard being a black man', and then someone says 'yeah, well being woman is bloody hard' etc until someone says, if you had to be white and female or black and male... Or when watching films where people dress up as another gender / race, like 'White Girls' for example.

I've had this conversation a few times. It often gets at what I posted about CA above, what part of your identity if any can you not even throw your mind to not having or being.

Like I say, pretty much all, in fact I am sure every single one of my black female friends and family if we've ever had this conversation with have said they would be black and male.

It's funny that when in conversation about it with my white female friend she said black woman. Knowing me, I'm not surprised there aren't many people in my life clamouring to be white men in my hypothetical jokey question - sheesh!

I personally couldn't fully imagine the impact of whiteness in my life, but I am in such proximity to black men that I do feel I can empathise with them quite readily, so I would choose black and male over white and female, though I think my life (all things being equal) would be easier if I were white and female. The white male experience just seems so far removed from mine I can't even imagine, just can't. I also don't know that many white men personally. I don't have any close relationships with them at all now. None in my phonebook.

I guess the question could be recast, in a way, as 'what could you more readily imagine living without; racism or sexism'.

For anyone who thinks I should not be able to ask a question of black women only - this is how much social research works, you think of a demographic, you ask them a question. A totally valid way to go about things. I'm not withholding resources from anyone. There are no direct consequences attached to how someone might answer. I've done it before and I'll do it again.

It's so interesting that some posters have really objected to the question. That in itself could something.

I had this thought again while watching I May Destroy you, when Arabella she is sitting in the publishers office and she is talking about, no reading a first challenging draft of her book which focusses on her experience of rape and how it forced a mind change in her - until that point she had felt stridently black, very much aware of the impact of race on her life. But since the rape she had felt the oppression of being female far more, and it crystallised in her asking whether she could join that tribe of women or whether she was too late (or something such).

Sometimes it seems parts of our identity are activated more. During the times of BLM I was walking around with race in my head all day at least partly because it was traumatic. During the height of Metoo it was the same.

But yes, very interesting to me as someone who has three social science degrees that people dislike the question

For the record, I have asked DP this question and he said black female.....

@BitOfFun

Would you rather be a penguin with no legs, or an eagle without wings?

Eagle, deffo!

@BitOfFun

Would you rather be a penguin with no legs, or an eagle without wings?

Brilliant! The perfect response to a brainless question.

I believe I can tell when a white woman posts on BMN. To my mind black women on BMN seldom post rude messages. They seldom swear at others without real justification, they don't really call names. I find that kind of thing really off-putting and it's one of the things I like about BMN. It's a shame some other posters, should they do post here, cannot seem to respect the culture of this space.

Mine is a tongue in cheek question. However, it's not pointless or stupid, because let's face it there are people changing identities everyday. There are men legally transitioning to women, women to men (whatever one might think about that) and there are people who are identifying with a race or ethnicity to which they are not (whatever one might think about that). There are famous cases, which we are very aware of, but there are also everyday examples of which we might not.

These people have made the decision to change at least one aspect of their identity, so it really is possible, for a light-skinned black woman to decide whether she wants to remain a) known as black and identify as such, and b) female, and identify as such.

Now, for me it was just a chatty breezy conversation. I'm not compelling anyone to answer. I've had some fun chats around these questions myself, it's all good if others don't want to on here.

But for me it doesn't look good on white women to come onto BMN and put down a black woman for a a question she is thinking about. Actually, these questions are being thought about and acted on each and every day.

As I am, a black women. The male experience is one so far removed from mine and so is the white one. I'm happy as a Black woman.

I would have been quite offended by your white friend's answer of Black women just being all about fun. It's reductive and patronising and reminiscent of the imperialist attitude of infantilising people in countries they colonised because the locals were stupid, ignorant etc and only concerned with having fun. Like the depiction of Polynesian people only being concerned with surfing and swimming and white people concluding they just want to play and were lazy instead of acknowledging how efficient they were as a people because they got up early and had all their work done by mid morning and valued leisure time and recreation. It just seems a coded way of saying I have to work so hard and Black women are just out here having fun. It's also disingenuous and dismissive of BW struggles, or an outright lie. Well at least that is how I would have felt and asked her genuinely about the disparities between white and black women in health, safety, wealth etc outcomes, if her answer was truly the same.

I’ve noticed how some black males seem to be where I live, especially older teens...they seem very wary

Fascinating that this is a white (female?) understanding of what it means to be a black man - across the entire world.

Whereas I think of kings, and prime ministers, Nobel Prize winners, philosophers, architects, explorers, doctors and mathematicians, fathers and teachers - generation upon generation upon generation of proud, thoughtful, clever and kind ancestors - my own and other people's.

I like being me, thank you very much. But would I rather be Wole Soyinka or Carrie Symonds? Ha!

I wouldn’t want to be either male or white, happy being me, a black woman.

I believe I can tell when a white woman posts on BMN. To my mind black women on BMN seldom post rude messages. They seldom swear at others without real justification, they don't really call names. I find that kind of thing really off-putting and it's one of the things I like about BMN. It's a shame some other posters, should they do post here, cannot seem to respect the culture of this space.

But you don't know what colour these posters are, do you? You are just assuming that rude posters are white, because "black posters rarely post rude messages".

Was your friend one of the women good at black-fishing ? Take the good without carrying the burden. How very nice and lovely of them.

"But yes, very interesting to me as someone who has three social science degrees that people dislike the question"

OP, so what do you make of people disliking the question?

she said black and female, and then she said it come to her mind quickly because she thinks black women have more fun

Hmm, black women have more fun...really? More than who? White women? Black men? White men?

And What fun? The fun of being the beauty standard? The fun of White privilege? The fun of male privilege? The fun of being believed automatically when you say something? The fun of people, including other women, standing up for you and speaking up for you especially when shit hits the fan and things get really controversial, not just in 'lite' moments?

Or The fun of loving yourself? Well, may be but nah, she's just being patronising or ...okay, she's just being nice. She knows she won't choose to be a black woman if it was a real life choice to make.

@maggiethecat

"But yes, very interesting to me as someone who has three social science degrees that people dislike the question"

OP, so what do you make of people disliking the question?

Well, I think I framed the question badly. This isn't a situation where you are all sitting in my front room, feet in socks on the sofa with your second glass of wine on a Friday night . That is clearly harmless. This board not so much.

I wonder whether there is a certain mistrust over the question. What is that person really getting at etc.

I also wonder whether some people interpreted it as me asking which they would 'like'. Perhaps the word 'prefer' did that. And also that I somehow meant which would be preferred over being a black woman. That question on BMN is going to throw up 'none!' answers, of course.

Possibly some people were offended. Perhaps the idea that they could ever imagine being anything other than that which they are. And that is fair enough. Ofcourse no offence intended. My position was that we do know social forces shape the lives of men and women, black and white differently. And so asking which you could tolerate given your starting point as a woman doesn't strike me as such a far stretch. But then I think about people and their lives all day for job, wondering how people feel being themselves, what life is like for them.

And I think other black women could tell me why they don't like it or object to it. I don't come on BMN to hear from white women, but hey, it's apparently inescapable.

I wonder whether some answers could be a little revealing, too.

It wasn't any more loaded than what I asked. I could have been very silly and asked if an evil fairy godmother Carabosse turned up at your birthday party and said because your parents didn't invite her to your christening she would turn now you into a white female or a black male, and she gave you ten seconds to decide which would you choose?

I'd choose black male (unless I could be a Jamaican white female, now that would be far harder for me..... ;)

I also asked guests at a dinner party once whether they would prefer their child were beautiful or intelligent. Two of 16 people said beautiful (they gave very funny explanations) but I do wonder whether any of the other 14 fibbed a little....

@curlingtoes

Yes,

But I will say that I think black women are depicted as having proper riotous lives, dancing and singing our way through life despite it all.. So resilient, so strong. That whole 'yes, those people have less than us, but they have happiness. they are happy, and that is so valuable'. That trope.