Questions for us, questions for you

Dear non-Black siblings and siblings of Colour,

Do we regret always rapping along to the N-word? Sure, some of us get called Blackhead, but don't we actually know that not all racism is the same? That this word doesn't belong to us?

How do we feel? When we quote Malcom X and Mohammad Ali, misuse them as our very own symbols of Islam and turn a deaf ear when an Amca says something racist about Black people again? 

Do we feel anything? What do we feel? What do we think? Why is ignoring so easy for us?

Speaking so hard, when it's not about ourselves?

We call ourselves brown and PoC and seem to have forgotten that the Black Power Movement gave us these terms because it thought of us when we failed to think of Black people. Don't we actually know that the Brown Berets and the Yellow Peril wouldn't exist without the Black Panthers? Don't we actually know that Black culture shared rap with us and taught us to use our oral cultures as resistance? Don't we know that Black resistance has been in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and many other fights from the very beginning? Don't we know that they fought for rights in order to share them with us, the other non-White people? 

We pretend not to know when we're handed the medal of model integration again. We stay silent about the inhumane treatment of Black people in the countries our parents or grandparents came from. We love to talk about our oppression, but we're glad when we're not directly exposed as foreigners. 

Don't we know—actually we do know—that it's not enough to stand up for ourselves, that after Hanau it wasn't the white majority we so want to integrate into that stood beside us, but Black communities and other communities of Colour? We know that we can never be free if not all of us are free. 

Dear white people,

What are you thinking when you try to gossip with us about BPoC who, in your view, aren't adapting well, whilst you pat us on the shoulder?

What do you expect? Should we thank you for giving us your hand whilst you tread on our siblings? 

When you complain about overly radical anti-racists and mention the escalation of demonstrations in the USA and tell us that you'd take the movement more seriously if it were only peaceful, are you then suppressing the fact that you also shot King? 

Honestly, I don't care anymore what you think of our resistance, 

because whilst you treat yourself to a shark cut at the barber and our music bangs, you get scared when we roll past you with loud bass. 

because whilst Solingen, Hanau and Celle are just cities to you, I have burning houses before my eyes, I hear gunshots, I feel a knife wound in my belly. 

Tell us nothing of your positive experiences with the police,

whilst we get stopped without reason for what feels like the hundredth time, 

whilst we're suspected even though we called the police ourselves, whilst you dispose of your Black Lives Matter signs on the way home, whilst we're interrogated for hours. 

Believe us when we say Pigs are Haram and join us, or just let us do it.

Danyel Büyükaşık