A Wednesday post on Threads.

“What would you do if a white woman touched your braids as a Black woman and then hit your arm and said “why did you tell me about Black people braiding rice in their hair during slavery?”

Asking for myself because yes this happened to me and I’m traumatized.”   @wildgena

*edit – “why DIDN’T you tell me about…”(but I’m sure you get the idea / revision) and thank you everyone for coming to me about this and made me feel seen and understood because PHEW.

These comments are word for word. I’ve changed the other commenters’ names.

directed to @wildgena “I have a genuine question. Why would you braid rice in your hair? Or was that a misunderstanding?” @tolo

“Google this.”  @laura.rftm

“Takes 10 seconds to type and inform someone instead of telling them to google something. Cmon.”  @thehannah

“We need to get better about doing our own work instead of asking Black women to teach us. I’m directing to the resource.”  @laura.rftm

“Are you black??? You’re the one that answered lady! I’m asking you!!!”  @thehannah

“I am not Black. I answered you with I am pointing them in the direction of where they can find the answer so next time they can try that first.”  @laura.rftm

“Ok lady”  @thehannah

First, some notes. I do not engage with people on the internet without at least an idea of who they say they are.

@tolo’s page has Liberalism is a disease splashed across the top along with a profile photo of a mocked up “liberal suppository” to provide antipsychotic relief for — and I can’t make this us — Trump Derangement Syndrome. We can reasonably argue their question wasn’t posed in good faith, but this conversation is more about what follows.

@thehannah’s profile photo is of a white woman with her dog. There’s no bio but her replies and reposts suggest she’s following several of the same Black women I follow. Basically we’re in the white women trying to be allies club.

Alrighty.

Hannah had big feelings about me telling someone to search google. Her first response was snarky, the second was agitated, and she ended with dismissive.

As someone who’s in the same spaces I am I KNOW she’s seen the “don’t demand labor from Black women” conversation repeated ad nauseum. Maybe she felt like it’s our job to step in and provide that labor, but that’s just a guess.

Here’s the thing.

I’m a retired teacher. One thing any teacher worth their salt isn’t gonna do is shove answers in your face.

Crap. To be fair, that’s not necessarily true when you’re sick or pulled in four directions or late taking the class to lunch. Sometimes you do just give the answer and keep it moving to fight another day.

But when a learning opportunity arises every decent teacher I ever had helped me understand how to find an answer I needed. Librarians, too. As a whole we are a “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” sort of people.

So partly, yes, I said google because @wildgena had not offered up this space to answer questions. But also there is a whole world of information at our fingertips. Let’s encourage one another to practice fishing.