A Look At the Other Interracial Relationship…

I always say you can tell a non-black person that has ‘real’ (not surface level but deep relationships) black friends because they have a way they move that is not like others. They tend to be very open minded and have an amount of self awareness and humility that allows them to even be able to have these kinds of conversations and understand without feeling attacked or victimizing themselves.

It’s sad but it’s a real thing. These are the type of friends that my communities ppl (those of us that feel secure in our blackness) flock to.

Every 'sisterhood' I've had with a white woman or white adjacent was ultimately broken b/c of race. And it was devastating each time.

I love this. Can you do one where the friend were both POCs. I have friends who are Asian and Latina.

We should have a part-two with black men and white men. Let’s go! I loved this video!

I would love to see this with BW and other minority women.For me it’s easier to befriend them and have open and honest conversations.I don’t have time to explain anything to WW so I can be cool with them but I don’t think there’s much sisterhood there.

I dont believe in these types of relationships, but this was great dialogue.

This is amazing . So so important & reminds me of my Caucasian sister and allll the talks we've had over the years . Kudos Shan !

Love this convo Shan! 🔥🔥🔥

None of these people are friends if they feel they can’t talk about something or have to tip toe

Also the notion that all black people have been so harmed by white people is ridiculous

A white woman screening black men for a black woman….cringe 🤦🏾‍♂️

Me and my white best friend talk about race a lot. That’s the only way we’d be able to be friends. She has had to have difficult conversations and LISTEN. Even admitting to WW’s guilt. We are polar opposites. She was talking about things she doesn’t like about Michelle Obama. I told her, that she just described me, my mother, and Blk women we grew up with. She was shocked 😳 She considered Michelle as an elitist, yet she respects Blk women like her in real life😒

This was beautifully done. I thoroughly enjoyed this dialogue and appreciated the level of vulnerability and diversity in these ladies experiences. This is a masterful demonstration of emotional intelligence at its finest and when women of diverse backgrounds are able to support and embrace each other in our lived experiences (good or bad) beautiful things happen. This is the type of content we need more of; great job I'm also curious to watch the Hulu series.

So glad the book is becomming a show 🥰 Amazing author!!

To me the thing is that you have to say something when someone says something racist or out of the pocket even if it's just your white family. Furthermore, I have learned to set boundaries with them about many things and I was the first of my cousins to come out.

All of this can be challenging and I'm not as good at it as I should. But my family knows that if they wouls say racist shit to my friend or girlfriend it would not fly.

I don't ask for respect for me and people I bring to the table, I demand it or I'm out.

As a black man, watching this segment was enjoyable and refreshing to witness intelligent conversation in a safe space. As I was watching this interview I compared each conversation to how men think and handle similar situations because we’re wired differently on a masculine level. I learned a lot and I’m a fan of your content.💯🔥💯🔥

this episode was hard to watch not because of the topics or the discussions that came out about it but how one sided everything we are presented with edits. first 10 minutes were really hard to digest. ranking feelings of insecurities to things you don’t have control over is a crazy thing to invest your life in this way. i understand the need to explore but this was needlessly brutal.

That white girl talking a lot of crap

I worked at the front desk at a new est. where my managers were both people of color (1 West Indian, 1 Latin). The owner was White and the majority of the staff that worked directly under him were white. There were only a total of 5 people of color working in hospitality for the est, and the majority of the manual workers were also of color, with only 1 white manual worker. I was the only “African American” at the front desk. I was fired and was told it was because I didn’t “fit the owner’s vision” and he prefers a more “bubbly” personality at the front desk. This outweighed my consistent punctuality, professional greeting to customers upon calling, emailing, and entry into the space. I also made many self-starting contributions, and reached daily goals within my job description.

But because I wasn’t “smiling enough”, and potentially asked a lot of questions about my employment to the person that onboarded me (hr manager was ooo), I was replaced after just one month of my hire. The owner ordered my West Indian manager to deliver me the news.

This is heartbreaking. I'm black and sometimes I forget how hard it is living in black womanhood. I'm so busy hyping myself and not dwelling on things I can't change that I be forgetting.

Powerful, important conversation

This is about to be revolutionary! The merge between entertainment and reality ❤️✨ Great work Shan ✨

In regards to white family: as a ww, I remember asking myself, "is my family racist?! How is their whiteness going to show up?" As I started getting into relationships outside of my race (and desiring to bring them around family), I genuinely did not know where they stood on the spectrum. I knew they were "nice people" but had never had any experiences of them in mixed spaces. So it was interesting to step into that with them. It hasn't been an easy process because they do not take it as seriously as I do. It's tough to be patient with them. I try to stay in curiosity because they definitely don't want to harm anyone. They just don't always know when their intention is not matching with their impact. I'm happy to take on the emotional labor of that though cause I know it helps the greater good to pull back these veils!

Appreciate you talking about race in a different context. Resonates with me. Gonna check out the show because of you.

I really enjoyed “Queenie”. I’m from a similar background (British Caribbean) but older. It’s nice to see my cultural background being shown on TV. That’s quite rare these days.

I have these conversations with my white friends who are able to agree to disagree. I have a few white friendships that I’m very close to and we just understand that our experiences means we don’t agree on many things in society but we still genuinely love each other and agree on other things that are directly in front of us.

Love this 👏🏽

“Race relations” is a very slippery slope. We’re so far removed from the 1500’s yet the infrastructure for anti-black racism is still strong all over the world. In a lot of cases, it’s more subdued and disguised, but it’s definitely there. I believe that since we’ve never been included, acknowledged and allowed to heal, there’s distrust on one side and a complete and intentional lack of understanding on the other side. Black folks have been put through a lot of adversity in which the effects have been passed down from one generation to the next with absolutely no reconing whatsoever.

Love this conversation. Are you able to do this with a dark skin black woman as well? We definitely want inclusion!

I disagree with the conversation within the 2-7 minute block… Maybe it’s because I don’t identify with these type of black women? I feel like they are victimizing themselves… like where do you live where you have to wonder if the black man who is interested in you likes black women (the black girl with the blonde ombré hair)? Or the pretty full figured/thick black woman who was giving Jill Scott vibes? Wth… okay let me continue watching 😅

Thank you God I never felt this way about my dark skin!!! I always knew I was perfectly beautiful, would hang with mix friends and I was still the ne that stood out and got the attention!!! THANK YOU GOD! These black women have some SERIOUS self esteem issues, but they are also not that attractive, Sometimes it has nothing to do with your skin color...you are SIMPLY just NOT ATTRACTIVE, AND NO OFFENSE...none them on the couch is that attractive.

These conversations are so needed, and yet are so complex. Some may hate this analogy but when you call a large corporation to report an issue, or to ask for a change, etc. The time to reach the company will be lengthy and the front line worker has no power to create change. These companies are untouchable. Much like the systems that are at play in our present lives. Education, Prison, Medical, housing, justice system, etc among others. They have biases built into the system which is run and maintained by people but the issues that affect us daily are in part like fighting a large corporation. It's lengthy theres no guarantee of success. many have come up against and failed. And oftentimes you're hiring someone to represent you who is a part of the problem or matrix. It's hard to have conversations like this about racism or any other negative ism b/c its' not just a person you are fighting. You are fighting mindsets of every living being which has in some ways been conditioned and you are awaking from this if you think critically to realize humans are their own problem. That we created the division ourselves, so in theory we should be able to fix it.

Thank you Shan!! Love these toes if conversations

I really REALLY tried to watch Queenie and gave up somewhere in ep4 .... It is painfully boring.

Hi Shan I just came across your video. I loved it but! Lol I want to make a statement because there is a component to this conversation that makes this conversation a two parter for many reasons but here is my reason. Yourself and the other three ladies are mixed raced. Did you do that intentionally? But,I have to say and maybe it’s because you’ve done your work you seem more solid in your blackness and not as assimilated as the other three. This is not an attack on the other ladies or a judgment it’s an observation. I’m wondering if because these other women seem so much more assimilated could it be contributing to maybe some confusion from their white friends about how to engage with this “black thing”? Because I get the impression that there is so much code switching that their friends probably didn’t even realize that there was a thing to even deal with in our friendship. I’m going to wrap up. This is where the two parter conversation should be had with the other sistas about being authentically black with their friends,co-workers and themselves before you can even ask someone to acknowledge your blackness especially when to some extent they see you as them. And they aren’t the only ones many of us non mixed blacks do this as well.

This discussion is phenomenal! I relate too much…. As a US born Igbo-New York woman…it’s so complex, nuanced and insidious…. The opaque violence and the screech of silence leaves ripples in my memory that I swat like gnats. I experienced yt friends who were clearly experiencing superiority complexes and I saw them clearly but found it laughable…. Bc I could see their trauma…. But they truly deluded themselves to believe they were intellectually superior but I knew myself and my worldview …. And we did not align…. Also they could not have hard conversations. I will literally never delay hard convos…. Like… won’t schedule it… like right the fuck now. Also, epigenetic colonialism is real af…. People play stupid or obtuse and conflate basic concepts to manipulate and deflect…. No mammy/jezebel or sapphire…. Call be Casper bc I’m fucking gone. Not playing no sister act…. (And also…. These energies are packaged differently by race, class, gender, religion, nationality, ability, etc…. But the intent is to perpetuate and benefit from inequity and obfuscate the clarity of reality.) let me watch the last 20mins…. Sooo good. Imma have to watch Queenie! 🤌🏿🤌🏿🤌🏿🤌🏿

I’m so glad that Mrs . Boody addressed that bit about going to an HBCU. That was open and honest and most biracial folks don’t say the quiet part out loud.

The girl in the yellow said that her friend never felt the need to conform to beauty standards or norms. Without going into any more detail, does it cross your mind for one second that her resistance to "norms" keeps her from getting attention from the masses and it's not about her being Black? Reverse the color and you'd have similar results.

As a BW, I’d say to these so called anti/racist WW (or WM for that matter) that the work that they need to do to transform institutional/structural racism is not in the context of interracial ‘friendships.” Rather, their work needs to be with their own white community and to fight for legislation that will repair black peoples through reparations which this country has been resisting for decades.

Watching these interviews was somewhat mentally exhausting as there are so many emotional hoops that these BW have to go through to stay in these “friendships!” Integration or assimilation to white spaces, imho, is psychologically traumatizing to black folks as both processes require that we constantly have to realign ourselves mentally so to feel validated by our proximity to whiteness. Dubois’s double consciousness applies here and it is a problematic phenomenon to constantly have to explain one’s humanity to someone else when it should be a given.

At some point, this notion of having to adjust to white spaces where there is an inherent imbalance of power and where black folks are only being tolerated in the context of undemocratic institutions and white supremacy is an exercise in futility. White folks are who they are with 500+ years of history/empirical data and counting to demonstrate their collective inhumanity. I personally wouldn’t stress myself to befriend them at a deeper level.

Watching this one hurt. But definitely worth the listen.

the irony of this and then they were boy have black women who can pass a paper bag test lol there’s no DARK SKIN women on this lol. also can we stop this “i’m light skin, im a victim”?

the irony of the host saying how important is it to check biases before these types of conversations and she doesn’t have a fully black woman on the panel lol😊

Is there a part 2? What a refreshing conversation.

Great conversation piece.

I am so impressed by the empathy

And the genuine self interrogation

Sooooo much here to unpack that I can’t even speak on in a single comment. I see other commentators have spoken eloquently on different points of the video. Just want to say, you are doing amazing, much needed, and thought provoking work, Shan. This video in particular blows me away!! 👏🏾 bravo bravo!!!!!!

I have an Indian trinidadian friend that says who says anti black and colorist statements. When I told him that he wrong he says if people get offended then that's their problem. Lately I've been distancing myself from him and I feel much better not communicating with him has much

Ugh I feel seen when the women said the first thing I think of in dating is does he like black women. I fully broke down with an ex because I assumed he (white looking / half Mexican/ white) never dated a black women before and it wasn't his preferred choice. This topic is incredible and healing

The white woman and mixed women are humblebragging. This is garbage.

Thank you Shan for having this conversation. It cut off so abruptly. I was glued to my tv screen. There were so many gems in this interview. I’m going to watch it again and take notes 📝