• ELIXHER
• On August 6, 2014

By Cairo Amani

“My white friends just don’t make me feel beautiful,” she says.

She looks shocked and confused over her statement as if she just realized its truth. She turns from the sink with a wet plate in her hand. I’m sitting right outside of the kitchen as she sums up her last clubbing experience in under 10 words. I immediately think, “Why are they your friends?” Instead I ask her to elaborate.

She explains that she had danced alone the whole night and her white friends danced with themselves. And even though my friend is a self-described “weird dancer,” she and I agree that it’s always nice to be asked. It’s the asking and not the actual dancing that makes someone feel desired and desire from people we love can often make us feel beautiful.

It makes no sense to go dancing with your friends and not dance with them (unless they do not want to dance). If I see my friend dancing alone in a corner, even if they’re not 100 percent fond of me rubbing my entire body on them, I’m at least going to dance near them, smile at them, or two-step beside them. It’s bad practice to go out with your friends and ignore them. And, to be fair, it’s bad practice to keep friends who don’t value you.

If I’m generous with the word “friend,” I have three white friends. They don’t know each other. We don’t go dancing together. I don’t rely on them for any sort of solidarity or support. I don’t seek out new white friends. There’s a good chance I never will. Am I prejudiced? Am I scarred? Am I scared? I’m not sure and answering those questions might take me some time. What I do know is that my humor, my writing, my style, my skin and my bones just fit most comfortably among queer people of color. But after my friend, who is six feet of fabulous, endless lengths of hilarity, thousands of degrees of warm compassion, told me that her white friends don’t make her feel beautiful, I was as alert as a lion in the Serengeti. It’s why I noticed one particular woman while clubbing in Philly.

For those of you who know the city, you’ll know that its most popular and only lesbian bar, Sisters, closed last year. I was at a gay men’s club, not even realizing that a lesbian party promoter had thrown an event there for ladies who love ladies. I watched people dance—happy to not be stuffed between a bunch of sweaty white guys. The crowd was small and scarce and I’m “so New York” that I pretty much sat there drinking my whiskey and wishing I was partying in NYC. There were two other Black women, one who came with her non-POC friends and another woman who seemed to be completely alone, mid-thirties, dressed entirely in black. She’d taken her heels off. (Y’all know how that is.)

She was just giving everybody life while she put in work. I never saw her sip anything or take a break. I also never saw anyone dance with her. I was there for two hours and no one even asked. Some women danced in her general vicinity. Some danced really close to her. Some danced right on by her.

Of course, this woman didn’t ask anyone to dance with her either. But if we’re going to talk about body privilege, white women were the flavor of the evening. White women were pretty. White women were in that season, so it might have been easier for someone in that room to go up to her—even if they got rejected. To be the only Black person in a room is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable even when the other two aspects of your identity—queer and female—keep you linked to the rest of the party-goers. So I’m not putting any blame on the woman in black for not going up to someone and asking to dance. That could’ve been damaging.

I know that I was sensitive to the situation considering what my friend had recently told me. I also know that the woman in black might not have wanted to dance with anyone because, clearly, she was fabulous all on her own. And perhaps the two white women with long dreadlocks and the other white girls trying to “wine” to the dancehall music the DJ played seemed too awkward. But as the night ended and it was just her and one white woman on the floor—one white woman who still danced near her but looked as if she wasn’t there—I was still uncomfortable. I was sad. I was confused.

Another close friend has a slogan she uses for workplace mishaps. “White women are not your friends.” It’s a funny interjection and often true to her stories but I began to wonder if it’s true all the time. Not because white women don’t want to be our friends, but because female body politics are so fucked up they don’t know how to be our friends.

This month has been a sad reminder of the divide inside of an already small group. However, I’m hopeful that we will continue to recognize each other’s humanity; that there will be less othering of bodies; that the next time there is a brown girl in the ring, she is joined by all her sisters in all their shades.

Cairo loves moleskin notebooks, considers Scrivener a godsend, and enjoys reading, dancing, and board games that involve doing silly things for points. You can find out more about her here: about.me/cairoamani.