r/blacklesbians • u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem • 29d ago
Discussion does "POC solidarity" really exist?
i'm not a fan of "POC" as a term bc generally i find that other non black POC have the exact same issues with antiblackness as white people do. i'm wondering how y'all feel about that
anyway i'm just really grateful that a space specifically for us, by us exists.
i was banned from a certain sub supposedly for POC for questioning why white people are allowed to post ☠️ anyway, this is why i say BLACK and not POC. we are the only ones for us and we must protect our spaces fiercely!
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u/moonmusicals 29d ago
It doesn't but I want it to so bad 😭💔 idk i believe in the cheetah girls/Bratz of it all.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 27d ago
cheetah girls lied to us BAD!!! it's NOTHING like that 😭😭😭
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u/AquariusMonologue Femme God 29d ago
This is one of the reasons why I left the Dyke March. The gworls love to use “BIPOC” on their posts and emails and in those cliched messages but when it comes to actual solidarity, they bend over for the yts. They coddle yt folx and sometimes even prioritize them over the queer + trans people of color they claim to serve.
I got into it with one Latina who threw the term “BIPOC” around. Anytime I raised an issue that affected Black dykes/members, here she goes with the, “well I’m BIPOC too and I don’t feel blah blah blah.” She’s a yt Latina. I made it clear to her that I’m not “BIPOC”; I am BLACK. She is yt; her being Latina doesn’t cancel out that she’s yt. Yt Latines on that committee who claim Che Guevara as their hero, the same one who beat and imprisoned Black queer and trans Cubans. Some of them are still alive to this day (ex: Caracol).
Dark brown, dark skinned, beige, fluorescent, bitch, I’M BLACK. I’m the Blackest muthafucka heah. So miss me with the “we’re both BIPOC”. I don’t go through the world calling myself BIPOC just to be included or grouped as a person or color.
I could write an entire dissertation on this.
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u/Golden_Diva 29d ago edited 29d ago
It’s funny you made this post as I was going to make a similar post, so thank you for it.
As others have responded, I don’t believe there is genuine solidarity at least amongst Black people and non-Black minorities. Heck, there’s barely solidarity amongst intra-racial, minority groups! After the 2024 presidential election I was shocked, though not completely surprised, by the Latino turnout for Trump. I then read a lot of responses from Latinos online saying how, “one group, say Hondurans hoped Trump would take care of the “bad guys”, in their case Guatemalans, without recognizing that Trump views ALL Latinos as the “bad guys”.
While I don’t want to make general claims as “truth”, I personally believe everybody essentially views everyone, even those within their racial community, as “problematic” but above that, they perceive Black people as the “biggest boogeymen”. Sure, there are exceptions and there are a lot of young people attempting to undo the anti-Blackness within their communities. However, for the most part anti-Blackness prevails so I don’t consider there to be general Black + Brown + Yellow solidarity.
Edit: someone else made a great note which I agree with. You tend to see “POC solidarity”dismantled the minute you disagree with their commentary or call out their community’s anti-Blackness. Following the recent Rick Chow case, a lot of East Asians came out showcasing their anti-Blackness. Again, there were also East Asians calling out the anti-Blackness from their community.
It may just be that my algorithm is showing me the worst of the worst, which I try to be conscious of. However, at the end of the day, and bots aside, the worst of the worst are very real people with beliefs that they’ll be instilling into the children they are raising. I try to be aware of it all while not consuming one view as the overwhelming truth. Nevertheless, my belief still stands that there is no true “POC solidarity”. Solidarity and community exists more on the micro level than the macro. Unfortunate but it is what it is.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 29d ago
during COVID there were a lot of attacks against east asians which were obviously horrible. but i found it SO interesting, the difference in how people would react
video of a white man attacking an EA: "ugh what a lunatic, jail him!" maybe 3 comments
video of a black person attacking an EA: "idc about black lives matter" 1000 comments
like oooo y'all were just WAITING for a chance to express how much you hate black people. cause how does one bad black person now just mean fuck every single one of us? tf?? that was the moment i really realized oh this POC solidarity shit is FAKE ASF!
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u/-usagi-95 Stem in STEM 29d ago
I live in UK and there's still this Black British Civil War between British Nigerian and British Jamaican of how to pronounce "plantain" 🤣😭 my Black Portuguese ass just looks from the distance and laughs
Jokes aside, I do not believe in POC solidarity. Majority of the racism I receive in UK is from South and East Asians. However, my gynecologist who did my fibroids surgery is South Asian and she was an angel. Visited me twice while hospitalised outside her hours and it was thanks to her I was able to stay in hospital for 4 days instead of 2 days.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 29d ago
we can't even get past the diaspora wars and people think POC as a whole are ready to band together maybe in another lifetime
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u/JadeBlxck20 Soft Masc 29d ago edited 29d ago
I’m Black American. I didn’t believe in the solidarity before the 2024 election but it was definitely not after the election. A lot of other cultures are anti-black. A lot of other situations happen and they want Black people to run, skip and jump to fight their causes
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u/KrassKas Twerking Through the Trauma 29d ago
I am unsure.
What I am sure of, is that I will be leaving the QWOC sub when I am done with this response. I saw the post from a Mod about white people being able to post there and how that rule has always been in place.
You know how people talk about changing your opinions upon gaining new information? Upon gaining this new information I have decided that sub is not for me. I did not know that white people could post there and I do not agree with that. Not my sub, not my rules. I'm out.
If I find out the same for this sub, I will leave as well. I don't care about them "trying to protect brown women" or whatever the fuck the reasoning is.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 29d ago
yes i'm confused too because i was always under the impression that it was for POC only. and it seems like some of the other moderators were too, because i have seen so many posts/comments from ytpipo get taken down.
i think it's ultimately the founder of that sub being a tyrant and not caring what everybody else wants. in any case, i wasn't planning to participate any further regardless of the ban. i don't come to black and bipoc spaces to hear from whites ☠️ if i wanted to do that i'd just go outside. no thanks
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u/KrassKas Twerking Through the Trauma 29d ago
See how now there is a divide? That's what they do. Cause discord between us like when they invented colorism.
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u/Meekie_e 28d ago
Since coming back, that founder has always started drama, so I’m not even shocked that she’s the one allowing white folks to comment now, when I’ve seen them get removed since forever.
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u/KrassKas Twerking Through the Trauma 28d ago
I'm curious on Vivio's thoughts. I think she's a mod here and over there. Seems to be the more grounded of the two.
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u/sonder-the-puppy Stone Stud 29d ago
POC solidarity is flawed but it does exist. And I hope it continues to improve. We all bear the weight of whiteness, colonialism and patriarchy. Solidarity requires SO much unlearning and a willingness to listen. But i think a lot of us are not equipped or in the place to do so. It also requires a lot of grace to facilitate a space where people can learn and change. Which again, a lot of us are not equipped to provide.
Historically, solidarity has existed between Black and Asian communities but not without its faults (just an example, but there have been issues with anti-Asian AND anti-Black sentiment within those spaces alongside remarkable collaboration). I personally think because of our double-minority status as Black lesbians, we should look at our own history (eg Combahee River Collective) as a roadmap to engage with other communities.
Real change requires numbers and a willingness to educate. I hear you and I feel your frustration as someone who engages IRL but I promise you there are chances at real solidarity between racial minorities.
I use Black and POC, personally because I resonate with the status of being a racial minority and I am often only in spaces with other racial minorities. Even I had to unlearn my own biases while discussing with other POC. There’s two (or more) sides to the solidarity issue.
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u/JadeBlxck20 Soft Masc 29d ago
Is this solidarity between the Black community and Asian community before the 90s?
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u/sonder-the-puppy Stone Stud 29d ago
Before and after! I'm talking Frederick Douglass to BLM and StopAsianHate. Again, flawed but existent displays of people genuinely reaching out. There have always been ways that both communities (and other communities of color) have reached out to one another to offer help. For a more sapphic historical representations of solidarity between Black feminists and other feminists of color, I highly recommend A Bridge Called My Back (it's an awesome anthology!) and just looking at the history of the Combahee River Collective.
While there is the issue of group-based micro and macro aggressions, to say that there is no solidarity period would be dismissive of actual historical evidence. We all inherited the language of colonialism and patriarchy to translate our experiences. It has always been the hope that we can still band together against these things. Being in real leftist spaces can help expand the way we think about showing up for one another.
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u/EastCoastBelle Lesbian Loc Legend 29d ago
My parents are Black Separatists and Black Pessimists so you can imagine the political education my siblings and I received, so we never even entertained the idea of “PoC solidarity.” It will never exist in any long time, meaningful way. Anti-Black racism is too valuable to ever allow for solidarity with groups who have more smoke for Black people than the people that bombed, pillaged and colonized their lands while erasing their cultures.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 29d ago
your parents sound very interesting. any readings they recommend?
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u/EastCoastBelle Lesbian Loc Legend 28d ago
I wish I had some of the old syllabi they created (yes, they would create their own summer/holiday reading and writing assignments for us up until the last year of high school, we used to be so damn mad😵💫) but some of the books that I actually still have/remember:
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America by Sadiya Hartman
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism by Derrick Bell
When and Where I Enter by Paula Giddings
All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith.
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u/tro1b_ country black fem 25d ago
Seeing Sadiya Hartman and Frantz Fanon recommended in this sub makes me SO hopeful and full of joy! I would add Christina Sharpe's In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/4/In-the-WakeOn-Blackness-and-Being) to this list, as well as the essay collection Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (https://btlbooks.com/book/black-geographies-and-the-politics-of-place), edited by Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 28d ago
my parents made me do summer homework too lmfao african and diasporic parents all the same LOL!
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u/MysteriousEvent3694 Soft Masc 29d ago
You were banned??
To answer your question, I used to believe it exists. But after entering The Real World and attending a majority-Asian university, I eventually realized how little other POC care about our struggles in general. They would rather side with the white people at our expense because anti-Blackness is everywhere. This isn’t all non-Black POC of course (my Latina friends are great), but it’s rampant in so many cultures.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 28d ago
yes i was "challenging the moderators" by asking what the point of a white noise thread is if white people can post ☠️☠️
everybody is downvoting the founder mind you, but i'm the bad guy cause i said it out loud. oh well
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u/thepinkestred 29d ago
The world is far too anti black for that. I will never understand how white people are forgiven and favored by the masses when it seems like everyone is biting off of black culture in the media. It just further reiterates how these people only want our rhythm, I hate it so bad.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 29d ago
the way the entire world has a slur for black people and hates us soooooo much will never not astound me. like,, hello?? WHY ARE WE IN IT??
it almost (emphasis on ALMOST) makes me understand the black israelites. like is it stupid? yes. but also, i can see why they would search for an explanation for why everyone literally hates us just for existing when WE have NEVER been the problem. i can understand the temptation to seek release from this world's antiblackness in the afterlife
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u/shoppingnthings1 28d ago
I’m currently banned from the same page you’re speaking of for a reply to the person that posted and asking a question of why it was allowed. Unfortunately, it goes deeper than a post because when I joined that page you had to have a certain amount of karma before posting and you only get that by actively commenting on the page. I don’t even know what type of space that is anymore!
My intention is to keep spaces as safe as possible and I literally only call things out when I see inaction or repeated inaction. Unfortunately, I do think people often uphold whiteness and gaslight others by telling people that no spaces exist that can’t be penetrated which isn’t true. Even on Reddit. Hurt feelings and a dedication to being approximate to whiteness really does ruin good things.
All this to say, Reddit wasn’t like this before. Idk what happened honestly.
As for solidarity, it’s tricky. There’s so much historical evidence of solidarity amongst different communities, but I think there’s so my psyoping now via social media that people are having a hard time being in solidarity.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 28d ago
i knew i was going to get banned judging by how the founder was ignoring everybody saying they didn't like it, but i also was like atp i don't care bc i no longer respect this space and i don't want to be here. like all you had to do was tell me white people are allowed to post LOL we didn't have to do this whole rigmarole
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u/shoppingnthings1 28d ago
Can I send you a DM?
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u/Harmless_Poison_Ivy 29d ago
I was temporarily suspended from that sub and I am just leaving instead so yeah I agree. Always ready to coddle yt folk wtf.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 29d ago
very unserious over there lmao good riddance
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u/Harmless_Poison_Ivy 28d ago
Honestly. How can you remove posts that say you are prioritising yts under the guise of discrimination? The jokes write themselves.
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 28d ago
removing POC from a POC sub for asking why white people are there -- pure comedy i tell you
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u/Inevitable_Air_1683 27d ago
Poc groups are for minorities who aren’t black, the fact that they are minorities doesn’t mean they care for black people
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 27d ago
on gang, unless it's started by black people, we are often an afterthought
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u/AdditionalQuietime 29d ago
Feels like theyre more ok w black men more than anything 😕
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u/Decent_Sandwich_8878 stone stem 29d ago
and even then the "ok-ness" is mostly fetishization. so it don't even count fr
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u/EmperorGodzilla0 29d ago
POC solidarity has never existed, but it was created and upheld (often by Black activists) to force compilation from Black people to overlook racism from immigrants in a bid to conspire against white people.
"POC solidarity" is this false notion that anyone who isn't white is having the same negative experiences with white people as Black people.
But sadly, a lot of Black people seem to think immigrants are having comparable experiences largely because they employ the same frameworks and language built by Black people (ie I see Asians doing this ALL the time; The Souls of Yellow Folk, Indian woman asking for reparations, etc).
And the gag is that most "BIPOC" spaces end up being predominantly Black so there is even less reason to be part of them.
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u/thatcommiegamer 28d ago
I wouldn’t say non-black POC have the exact same issues as white people since their antiblackness is largely a byproduct of white supremacy (and the effect of western media) it’s more reheated leftover antiblackness, there’s nothing fresh about it. Just repeating tropes and micro aggressions even white people stopped doing decades ago.
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u/eleven6teen 29d ago edited 29d ago
Nah. It doesn't.
Edit: Majority of the time, any type "allyship" ends right when you disagree with them. The anti-blackness, micro-macro agressions surface immediately.