The Pain of Being the "Black Friend"
The pain of being the only Black friend is having to accept that I have spent more of my life code-switching than I have existing as my authentic self. It means that I have wasted so much time swallowing my disgust when former friends caught a glimpse of other aspects of my identity and told me that I was behaving ‘out of character’.
The problem is: everyone is racist. Regardless of how uncomfortable that may be for some to accept, the sooner everyone does the better. Racism is so deeply embedded into the foundations of our modern culture; interred between the crevices of our bones. This country (and the capitalism it is desperate to uphold) built itself upon racism and relies on racism to succeed. This country is not some abstract entity – it is made up of individuals, most of whom uphold and perpetuate racism as easily as they breathe. Racism is a vast spectrum of behaviours and belief systems. It is more productive to figure out where we sit on that spectrum than to waste time debating or denying the necessary fact of our racism.
I have had a former partner and former friends use their proximity to my Blackness to deny accusations of their own racism. I have never had a friend ask how their racism shows up in our interpersonal relationship. Unfortunately, I have too many examples to count. ‘Friends’ audaciously singing the N Word in my presence; mocking the shade of a boy’s skin – not realising that boy is my brother; the unspoken belief that I am imperceptible to pain – I have experienced it all.
Most of my life has been spent in majority white spaces. Black people make up 3% of the British population, so I guess this should come as no surprise. What continues to surprise me is the number of former friends who have nonchalantly told me how ‘white’ I am, many of whom meant it as a compliment. The inability to truly recognise Black people and ‘Blackness’ as heterogenous is racist.
Overwhelmingly, I have been forced to occupy spaces that make me feel uneasy. Over time I retreated further into myself, opting for isolation for the sake of peace. Whilst I have always enjoyed my own company it is a shame that I very rarely found solace or comfort in the company of some of my former friends. I can’t even be sure if it is that I am a natural introvert, or if whiteness has dominated my life for so long that solitude has become my comfort blanket.
Over the last year I have become much more intentional with who I consider a friend, who I acknowledge as an acquaintance, and who I am better off not knowing. It has been important that I do. There are only so many times I can be tone-policed, told to perform my emotions in a way whiteness can understand, or feel pressure to explain myself or my cultural background. It took a lot of heartache to get to this point, but I have no time for ‘friends’ committed to misunderstanding me or causing me harm. I would rather be alone. For good measure I have to mention that being left with friends’ racist parents will always be an incredibly violent experience.
I don’t wish to list my experiences of micro and macroaggressions over the years, but there is one in particular I have to share. Following the murder of George Floyd, a former friend opted to attend the Black Lives Matter protests in London. It is all the more important I share this because there are many people who believe that simply attending a protest is atonement for their anti-Blackness. Protests are a vehicle for change: it is not the same thing as actually doing the work. When the friend had mentioned wanting to go, I suggested that it was a bad idea and that there were more suitable avenues for allyship. I was ignored. Dismissed. Disregarded. Said friend’s parents didn’t feel comfortable with them returning to the family home after the protest, given the pandemic, and so the friend returned to the house they shared with me.
Let me explain why this is such a violent and racist situation:
Whilst Black people make up 3% of the British population, 50% of us are based in London. The Black Lives Matter protests were held during lockdown; I was so anxious about coronavirus at the time and so unwilling to see non-Black people virtue signalling that I had no desire to attend. My housemates had all left to their family homes, and I had the rare privilege of being able to isolate alone. Black people are 4 times more likely to die from coronavirus than our white counterparts. This former friend wasn’t exactly sticking to lockdown rules (no judgement, just a fact) and did not live in London. There were similar protests being held in their hometown. This former friend ignored the suggestion of, quite possibly, the only Black friend they had and went to the London protests anyway.
They then posted a picture of themselves at the protest, accompanied by a caption about the importance of allyship, and returned to the house I had been isolating in alone. When I brought it up with them, I was then victim to tone-policing. I was told to remember that they were sensitive and that I should have been kinder with my words. This is in no way an experience that is unique to me.
Many people would be quicker to find justifications for this former friend’s actions than they would be at acknowledging the harm they caused in their refusal to listen to me. If you found yourself coming up with excuses for them, you will have to ask yourself why. The issue here is that, given the circumstances, the best way this friend could have shown that Black Lives Matter to them was to seek to protect the Black people in their life. Speculatively speaking, protecting me by staying at home (or going to a local protest) wouldn’t have afforded them the opportunity to advertise their allyship, and I suspect that contributed to the dismissal of my suggestion.
Attending a protest, mixing with vast amounts of people, and then travelling to a shared house with someone anxious about coronavirus because they are 4 times more likely to die than you are (due to racial inequality) if they got infected isn’t just inconsiderate – it is deeply insulting and violent. The disregard for the potential harm that may be caused to my Black life – and the fact that it most likely never even crossed their mind – is racist in and of itself. Many people care more about branding themselves as allies and remain cognitively dissonant to how their performance of that allyship sometimes brings the only Black people they actually know harm.
Being the only Black friend can be exhausting. I have often felt like I am going insane; seeing and feeling things everyone else is apparently oblivious to.
After George Floyd’s murder and the rise of virtue signalling online, I deleted all my social media. This isn’t an unusual thing for me to do. I have often found the need to take a break from those living in a different reality to my own and disappear off the face of the earth for a while. This time last year I bore witness to non-Black people who had only just discovered racism and anti-Blackness hellbent on explaining things they lacked the range on to others. I had to dodge *that* video, not quite understanding why the world was so open to making the trauma of a Black man dying in the most inhumane of circumstances go viral. Black people are rarely afforded dignity in the public sphere; violence against our bodies is so normalised that sharing a video of the last 8 minutes of George Floyd’s life was considered ‘educational’ to some. It is concerning that some people feel they cannot learn about the injustice of racism, anti-Blackness, and police brutality without subjecting a violated Black body to the white gaze.
So many times, during that awful phase of 2020, I felt the self-imposed pressure to educate my predominantly white followers and friends. I was explaining issues to people who most likely did not see themselves as part of the problem. My sleep paralysis returned. I went from having not run in years to finding no amount of time spent running could help me outrun the ways I was being retraumatised online. It all became too much for me, and so I opted for physical and digital isolation.
Being the only Black friend means I have often been alone, invisible, or the odd one out in spaces I have had to seek community. I have had ‘friends’ mock my hair, my lips, my entire identity – and then berate me for ‘not being able to take a joke’. What’s worse is, at points, I agreed with them that the problem was my being oversensitive and overdramatic.
My sister has often asked how I manage to exist in white/non-Black spaces all the time. The honest answer is: I don’t. Three years ago, I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. A part of me still fears social interactions. I worry I won’t laugh at jokes because the cultural references weren’t part of my upbringing. Or the joke isn’t funny because it is loaded with prejudice. I dread white people comparing their tans with the colour of my skin. I hate that I bite my tongue when people say and do wayward things for fear of being labelled angry or aggressive, when what I actually want to do is cuss them out. I have frequently wished I could vanish into thin air when I’m in a room full of white people philosophising about Blackness.
At times it is genuinely awful being the only Black friend. There are conversations I can’t have because nobody would understand. There is the fear of always being the bearer of bad news. There is the knowledge that my reality can sometimes be bleaker than the people I am around. The worst part is the microaggressions. I know racism intimately because the spaces I have spent most of my life in are full of ignorant people I have been forced to withstand.
The first three years of my university experience were some of the most traumatic years of my entire life; being in a predominantly white middle-class institution played a part.
Writing this, I despised how negative it all sounds. I could have gone into further detail about specific circumstances where being the Black friend has been unbearable, but I did not want to. My colonial academic experience means I have read through this piece so many times criticising myself for ‘not giving a varied range of perspectives’, for not having a cohesive line of argument, for being too vague. Racism affects me, but it is still something I am having to actively unlearn in every single facet of my life. The discomfort of existing at the fringes of one’s own existence has been a reality my whole life – I would do myself a disservice to speak in any voice other than my own.
I have relatively few friends these days, and I prefer things this way. Admittedly, most of my friends are white. I may still be the only Black friend, but I do not feel like an experiment or a vehicle to someone else’s personal growth. My friends and I discuss race – I am blessed to have some friends deeply committed to interrogating the ways things are – but my friends do not feel the need to share with me the steps they are taking to unpack how racism shows up in their lives. I wouldn’t want them to.
Allyship is a thankless job; nobody deserves a gold star for beginning to unlearn being a prick. Especially when the damage your ignorance has caused is something someone may still be struggling to heal from, expecting validation for unpacking your racism reeks of white saviour complex. There is a link there if you look closely enough. Who we are and what we believe manifests in our character whether we would want it to or not. This is something I find reassuring.
I am back on social media, initially reluctantly. I only follow people I like and have blocked the people who caused me harm. I do believe people can change; we all exist in flux, constantly shifting, growing, becoming. I know that. But there is something unbelievably insulting about people who have existed as oppressive forces in my life now virtue signalling about their so-called allyship online. I have no desire to see that.
I am still hesitant about making new friends. I still retreat into the comfort of self-isolation. Parts of me still worry that ‘friends’ will take personal joy in putting me down and will openly revel in my failures. I really hope that a few generations down the line, this may not be another Black woman’s reality. For now, it is what it is.
I am still a space where some people come to understand the interpersonal manifestations of racism. The difference for me, now, is that it is a space I hold for the people I am committed to understanding and who are committed to understanding me. It is a space that doesn’t actively seek to bring me harm.
Written by Adwoa Owusu- Barnieh
Adwoa is a 22-year-old ex-Greater-Londoner, currently calling Birmingham home. She studied Classical Literature & Civilisation at the University of Birmingham. Adwoa is perpetually preoccupied with the limitations of language and knowledge when it comes to understanding the human condition and – ironically – commits a lot of time and language to expressing her knowledge (or lack thereof) of these things. Her aim is to curate space for more intentional modes of living, ritual, and understanding.
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