Y’all . . .
I just heard some funny shit on Martha Stewart’s internet. White grievance in America has officially entered its lace-front era and discovered a new form of . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . “Black privilege,” chile.
That’s right, “Black privilege.”
I need somebody to call Rev. Al, Attorney Ben Crump, the NAACP, and the Urban League because we have been organizing around the wrong shit!
Noooo, this “Black privilege” ain’t generational wealth. No, it ain’t gettin’ more callbacks for interviews or actually landing a job. No, it ain’t an end to racial profiling in retail stores. No, it ain’t acquiring loans or a mortgage more easily. Nope we are not suddenly occupying more seats in political, corporate and institutional power. No, our high-ass infant and maternal mortality rates haven’t dipped. Nope, the 600,000 Black women who’ve lost jobs under the Trump regime haven’t suddenly been rehired via a new DEI initiative. And nope, we still ain’t get reparations.
So, WTF is this “Black privilege?”
Apparently, a new branch of Caucasian Critical Race Theory, has concluded that when a Black woman WNBA player puts 30 inches of 613 Oppressor Blonde wig on her head, she is “appropriating white culture.” And now, the white grievance goblins are losing their damn minds and the republic may not survive.
So what had had happened was, Chicago Sky player DiJonai Carrington got ejected from last Saturday night’s game against the Indiana Fever when she hacked Sophie Cunningham. After that, Carrington posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on social media and the Department of Caucasian Distress saw them two words and suffered a whole neurological event and started examining a sista’s hair.
Random social media users spouting all kinds of venom. “She wants her hair to be like Sophie’s but can’t grow it natural.” “Hoodrat straight hatin on the pretty white girl.” “I’m confused a black chick with fake blonde hair.” “Nothing says ‘I understand privilege’ like crying white privilege in a blonde wig.”
On Threads there’s a discussion on “Black privilege” and “thug basketball.” On Reddit, commenters want to know why this Black woman is “culturally appropriating blonde hair.” While one commenter asked the hypothetical: “What if Sophie Cunningham wore dreadlocks or cornrows, fouled Carrington, and then tweeted “black privilege?”
Now listen, all these grievance goblins had a perfectly available basketball argument about the flagrant foul, and they could have even had a healthy debate over the meaning of Carrington’s post on white privilege. But no, instead they conducted a forensic racial investigation of a wig. And quite frankly, these people don’t even know whether they’re looking at a wig, a weave, extensions, and hell, maybe even Carrington’s own hair. They don’t give a fuck. They see any Black woman out here with long blonde hair and their inner Karen immediately dispatches the House Un-American Hair Activities Committee.
But what I wanna know is when did white culture become blonde follicles? I need to know, Ya’ll.
So I called an anthropologist in Sweden. His name is Sven-Göran Axel Fredrik Gyllenstierna-Sjöström and his ancestors owned 17 forests and he has lots opinions about herring. For the last 26 years he has also served as the international conservator of blonde hair and gets paid to check Black women’s bundles at the Swedish border for unauthorized use of Nordic pigmentation. So the man knows his shit.
I interviewed Sven-Göran Axel Fredrik Gyllenstierna-Sjöström last night via Whatsapp.
Me: Professor Gyllenstierna-Sjöström, I so appreciate you for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with me. So I’m sure you’ve seen the latest WNBA drama, correct.
Sven-Göran: Ja, ja! I have.
Me: Professor, can you tell me please . . . when did blonde hair become “white culture?”
Sven-Göran: Ja, vell… Saturday night after ze game. I voke up Sunday morning and discovered my own blonde hair follicles are now an ethnicity.
Me: Here in America, the white grievance machinery is now claiming that Black women wearing blonde extensions is appropriation of white culture. What do you say about this?
Sven-Göran: Vell, if this is true, then by my calculations white American brunettes who bleach their hair blonde owe Sweden approximately 30 trillion dollars in royalties.
Me: Does Finland get royalties?
Sven-Göran: Ja!
Me: Sooo, Gwen Stefani owe reparations to Norway?
Sven-Göran: Ja!
Me: So you’re saying that white women who walk around with peroxide blonde hair have been engaging in intra-Caucasian cultural theft?
Sven-Göran: Ja! Ja! Ja!
Me: So we should be draggin’ Nicole Kidman with her salon records before the Hague?
Sven-Göran: Håhåhå! Ja, Staceypants, now you understand ze problem!
Me: M’kay, but what about Black women, like the WNBA player Carrington?
Sven-Göran: Vee are investigating. So far, in my 26 years in this position, I have only confiscated six bundles at ze border.
Me: Professor, the American grievance goblins are on Threads, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere arguing that blonde hair is white culture. Is this true?
Sven-Göran: För helvete! (For fuck’s sake!) NO! Jävla idioter. (fucking idiots.) It is pigmentation! Do you Americans know what culture means?!
Me: Professor, you sound annoyed.
Sven-Göran: Ja, vell, Staceypants, I have eight doctorates, I have studied blonde hair for 26 years, I have 17 forests, and 84 preparations of herring. And now I must explain to stupid Americans that HAIR COLOR IS NOT CULTURE?
Me: So professor, how do you cope with this frustration and lack of critical thinking that’s so rampant about the intersections between blonde hair and culture.
Sven-Göran: Not vell at all, Staceypants. This morning I tried to eat my usual two boiled eggs, three pieces of knäckebröd with Västerbotten cheese, pickled herring, and my black coffee which is strong enough to dissolve a spoon, and then I opened social media sites and saw Americans informing me that blonde hair is now a protected cultural artifact. I lost my appetite. I pushed away from the table, went for a long walk on ze shore and stared into ze Baltic Sea for forty-five minutes. Thinking.
Me: Thinking about what?
Sven-Göran: Walking in.
Me: Final question: so just to confirm, professor, blonde hair is not, in fact, an ethnicity or cultural practice?
Sven-Göran: NO! It is hair! HAIR!!! There is no international blonde ownership treaty!
Me: Professor, I so appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to me.
Sven-Göran: Ja. I must go now. Hej då!
Click.
Welp, there it is Y’all. You have now heard from Scandinavia’s foremost expert. He has confirmed, based on his 26 years of study on follicles and pigmentation, that blonde is not an ethnic homeland or a culture despite the American grievance goblins’ claims about Black privilege and anti-white racism. At the end of the day, what’s really going down is that these people don’t want to engage with the context of Carrington’s social media post.
These grievance goblins want to pretend as if last month members of Congress didn’t send a whole formal letter demanding that the WNBA investigate whether Caitlin Clark is being targeted with rough play because she’s white. They literally raised federal workplace-safety and civil-rights concerns and demanding a response from the WNBA. So Carrington didn’t just pull those words out of her blonde bundles.
Oh, and now, Florida attorney general, James Uthmeier, just said: “The WNBA knows better than to play games down here in Florida, because I’ll be charging people with assault.”
So we have members of Congress and the chief law-enforcement office of Florida, which doesn’t even have a WNBA team, trying to criminalize a majority-Black woman sport and bring federal civil rights charges over hard fouls in a contact sport, and folk want to play in our faces say race has nothing to do with any of this. Hmm-hmmm.
So now we’re talking about whether Carrington appropriated Becky’s follicles instead of why 11 members of Congress are threatening the WNBA. And we don’t have to have a serious conversation about why white women in this sport are being cast as endangered innocents who need extraordinary state and federal protection from dangerous thuggish Black women. Folks don’t have discuss actual white privilege because everybody and they mama is standing around Sally Beauty arguing about whether Black women have obtained the proper cultural permits for #613.
That shit isn’t just functionally stupid as hell. Because, once again, white grievance has manufactured an equivalence in which everybody is equally oppressed and equally privileged to the point where several centuries of American racial hierarchy can be canceled out by one Black woman baller wearing 30 inches of 613 Oppressor Blonde hair.
Umph, umph, umph.
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