When accused of being racist, or displaying and supporting racist actions, society continues to see white people call forth their respective B.B.F. (Black Best Friend) to serve as a personal voucher in discrediting any declaration of racism levied against them. Stop being the B.B.F. who enables and excuses the bigoted actions and behavior of the special white person in your life. Please know, simply because a white person is “good” to you, doesn’t mean they are exempt or inoculated from committing acts of racism.
Stop allowing that special white person in your life to use the n-word because, your white person is “down” with you, somehow making it okay for them to say. Stop nullifying the valid and legitimate experiences of Black people to defend and justify your special white person.
White people are not provided an immediate shield from supporting, encouraging, or participating in racists actions simply by having a Black friend, a Black spouse, a Black girlfriend, a Black boyfriend, a Black relative, a Black employee, a Black child, a Black pair of shoes, a Black dog or a Black cat. Stop being the B.B.F. who enables your special white person by acting as their emotional and human shield to defend and protect them from accountability for their actions. By doing this, you (the B.B.F.) are also shielding your special white person from awareness, self-reflection and the ability to develop. You may be trying to protect your special white person, but in reality, you are hurting them.
If you are a B.B.F. who engages in this type of support for your special white person, you may have Stockholm Syndrome, and should seek professional help immediately. The impact of post traumatic slave syndrome is real, we must all work together to lift one another out of that corrosive cavity. The slave mentality is a coping mechanism in which Black people engage in passivity and bury trauma in part, to deal with the mental toll plaguing our psyche. The legacy of slavery is not only having an economic impact on Black people, it is negatively impacting our mental well being.
B.B.F.’s may take pride in being the Black friend, by enjoying the fleeting praise, and little perks that could arise, like having their picture in a brochure or being paraded in front of cameras during congressional testimony. However, B.B.F.’s must realize that the blind adoration they have for their special white person is dangerous, as ironically it denies white people opportunity for accountability by stunting their emotional and intellectual evolution. B.B.F.’s have to stop filtering out the facts about racism to appease white people. Allow your white friends to face the consequences for their respective actions regarding racism. B.B.F.’s are not buffers for white people against claims of racism. The overuse of antibiotics creates bacterial resistance, just as the prolonged shielding of white people from exposure to responsibility for their racist actions, creates resistance to truth.