i’m more black than you are Painting

(3/3) “i’m more black than you are,” my white childhood friend used to joke. i’d laugh along, bc i was young and bc i believed it. /// Black always felt like a party i wasn’t invited to. in my mind, Black was a club where the bouncers looked me up and down and pushed me in my academic decathlon t-shirt aside to make room for the asian and latinx girls in school whose boyfriends defended them saying nigga. yeah, Black was the party where all the cool kids attended. culture was born at Black, and there’s no denying that. that’s why the line to get in was always so long. /// to me, from the outside looking in, the entry to Black seemed to differ based on who you were. for black men, you were guaranteed entry as long as you didn’t say anything corny. you had to come off real masculine tho, flex and you got in. for non-Blacks, you got in by association (who you fuckin?) or Black imitation or just showing love to Black. hell, if you’re non-Black but you know, you’re down, you might be able to perform there if you’re early enough. for black women, your entry was a notebook. inside the notebook put your art, your ideas, your soul, and they’ll weigh it at the door to see if it’s heavy enough for entry. you’ll have to stand to the side tho, and watch others enter while they weigh it. sometimes it won’t be enough, but they’ll keep the notebook bc Black can do anything it wants to black women. hell, Black might even slyly hand it to someone else entering the club to use themselves. . /// yeah. my childhood friend always said she was more Black than i am. now, i smile and laugh and hold onto my journal. . /// Ari Fitz IG shadowbanned me, so i don’t use this account. my new account is