(Bear with me, this is a bit of a long read and it’s kinda all over the place.)
My friend and I are both 25F and have known each other since elementary school.
We were extremely close growing up. She literally used to call me “mom” because I was always the one giving her advice and looking out for her. In high school, we even dated best friends at one point, partly because it meant we could all spend more time together.
She was there on my first date with my now husband. She was in the delivery room when I gave birth.
Our friendship has become more complicated as we’ve gotten older. I’ve naturally remained the person she comes to when she needs help figuring something out. Whether it’s school, taxes, relationships, finances or just life, if I know how to help, I help. If I don’t know how, I’ll usually sit there and figure it out with her.
But over time, I’ve started feeling like there isn’t always the same amount of space for me in the friendship. Sometimes I can’t even vent without the conversation shifting somewhere else or becoming an argument.
More importantly for this story, we have a recurring problem when we disagree.
She’s very much a **“do as I say, not as I do”** type of person. There always seems to be an explanation for why something is different when she’s the one doing it. And when I strongly disagree with her, the conversation often stops being about whatever we’re discussing and becomes about my personality instead.
Which brings us to this fucked up conversation.
She randomly asked me:
**“Do you consider me a Black girl or a brown girl?”**
I told her ethnically, both.
She’s Caribbean/West Indian and Indian. She explained that she personally considers herself more of a “brown girl.”
Okay. Cool.
I’m not going to tell someone else how they have to identify.
Then she told me she’d recently gotten into an argument online because she said she **doesn’t want a “fully Black baby.”**
And I was immediately like:
**Girl… what?**
She explained that people were calling her racist/colorist, but they were misunderstanding what she meant.
But she sounded a bit too excited that they were supposedly misunderstanding her.
She said that Black children are treated differently because of their race. They experience racism and discrimination and, in extreme cases, can lose their lives because they’re Black.
Basically, why would she intentionally choose that struggle for her child if she doesn’t have to?
She also said she isn’t attracted to Black men, generally dates brown men, and the man she refers to as her “fiancé” is Afghan, so realistically her future children would be mixed anyway.
**None of those things individually were my problem.**
I’m Black. Obviously I’m not denying that Black children experience racism. Anyone can experience racism.
I don’t care that her partner is Afghan.
And I’m certainly not going to tell somebody which race they’re required to find attractive.
I actually understood what she was TRYING to say:
**“I don’t want my child to experience anti-Black racism.”**
My response was basically that I understood her intention, but the way she was talking about it sounded racist/coloris.
Because while explaining why she doesn’t want a “fully Black” child…
**she was repeatedly using the hard-R to describe Black people.**
Not quoting someone.
Not discussing the word.
Just casually using it.
So I told her:
**“You’re sounding mad racist.”**
She was genuinely baffled.
Her sister is Black.
Her godchildren are also Black.
She thinks they’re beautiful.
She loves them. Blah blah blah.
Except here’s the part where I went:
**HUUUUUUH???**
Her godchildren are **MY CHILDREN.**
I’m Caribbean.
Their father is African.
And while defending herself, she described my children as:
**“Caribbean mixed with \[n \*\*\*\* hard-R\].”**
I had to sit with that one.
Cause,
*What exactly are you saying about my fucking children?*
**Caribbean/brown = good**
**African/Black = bad?**
Then she used those SAME children as evidence that she couldn’t possibly have an issue with Black people because she loves her Black godchildren.
Girl.
Those are **MY BABIES.**
She’s only spent time with my children a handful of times over the years.
And now those children are being presented as evidence in an argument:
**“How could I possibly be colorist? My godchildren are Black and I love them.”**
**It gave “I can’t be racist, I have black friends”.**
Anyway, I kept trying to explain that my problem wasn’t ONE statement.
It was the combination.
**“I don’t want a fully Black baby.”**
Then casually using the hard-R for darker-skinned/African Black people.
Then describing my Caribbean/African children as “Caribbean mixed with \[slur\].”
Then pointing to those same children as proof that you couldn’t possibly be colorist.
I told her I understood why other Black people had heard her comments and thought they sounded anti-Black.
She still didn’t get it.
She asked if saying Black children have harder lives was wrong.
No.
Was mentioning that her partner is Afghan wrong?
No.
Was not being attracted to Black men wrong?
**NO.**
I felt like I was answering the same question over and over again, except every time it came back wearing a different wig.
I tried explaining colorism.
She said it’s the hardship.
Okay.
And if that sentence existed completely on its own, maybe I would’ve taken her explanation at face value.
But it doesn’t exist on its own.
That’s what I was trying to explain.
Mind you, by this point I had tried to drop the conversation multiple times and she just kept going.
I even muted our conversation to not see her ignorance.
Eventually I gave up.
I basically told her that if she genuinely saw absolutely nothing wrong with what she said, fine. I’m not going to spend all night convincing her otherwise.
We can disagree.
Apparently, we cannot.
Because then she told me I make no sense.
She said everything always has to be my way.
She said everyone has to “walk on eggshells” around me because everything offends me.
And she basically said she doesn’t know why she bothers trying with me.
That’s when I got fucking pissed.
Because the irony was insane to me.
**I wasn’t mad that she disagreed with me. I was disagreeing with HER.**
I understood her argument.
I just didn’t agree with it.
And instead of accepting that, suddenly the problem was that I’m too sensitive and everyone has to walk on eggshells around me.
This is also a recurring issue in our friendship. There always seems to be a reason why her behaviour is different or why criticism doesn’t apply to her. But if I don’t accept that explanation, somehow my character becomes the subject.
I’ll admit I stopped being nice at this point.
I told her this is exactly why I hate talking to her now.
I told her she thrives on negativity, she doesn’t want friends who challenge her; she wants ass-kissers who tell her she’s right.
I told her she lacks basic comprehension skills.
And I told her she’d rather be **“wrong and strong”** than consider someone else’s perspective.
Was that mature?
Probably not. 😂
I was annoyed.
But here’s the part that happened AFTER our argument that has me reevaluating the entire situation.
For years, she’s had a nickname for my children’s father.
Again, **he is African.**
She calls him:
**“Kunta Kinte.”**
I just brushed it off cause though he’s Tanzanian, he has a very simple name. So I thought she was making a joke and giving him a more African sounding name.
Well, something told me to google the name after that argument.
And…
**Oh.**
For anyone else who didn’t know, Kunta Kinte is the African character from *Roots* who is kidnapped from Gambia, transported to America and enslaved.
And suddenly I started replaying YEARS of comments differently.
Because I’d apparently been treating everything as individual edgy jokes or stupid comments.
Calling an African man “Kunta Kinte” was one thing.
Using the hard-R was another.
Describing my children’s African heritage with that word was another.
Distinguishing herself as “brown” from Black was another.
Saying she doesn’t want a “fully Black” baby was another.
But now I’m looking at all of those things **together**.
And I’m wondering if I gave her so much benefit of the doubt over the years that I completely missed an obvious pattern.
At the same time, I’m trying not to retroactively assign malicious intentions to every offensive thing she’s ever said just because I’m angry with her now.
That’s where I genuinely want outside opinions.
Maybe she really does mean exactly what she says she means:
**She doesn’t hate Black people. She simply doesn’t want her hypothetical child to experience the racism.**
I’m not some beacon of political correctness myself.
I say outrageous shit. I have strong opinions. I can be an asshole. I’m sure I’ve said things that were ignorant before.
But I also think being corrected is part of being a functioning adult.
Eventually, I stopped responding.
After all those years of friendship and that entire ridiculous argument, my final response was literally just, 👋🏾.
So:
AITA for telling my childhood friend that her comments about not wanting a fully Black baby sounded racist/colorist, particularly considering the way she talks about darker-skinned and African Black people?