Unfollow Me: Essays on Complicity

Hi, liberal white people that like to name your kids after deciduous trees and maybe go to the local Unitarian church and also live in an unassuming and intentionally disheveled Craftsman-style house in a neighborhood that black people can’t afford anymore. Hey. While you’re here, I … I just thought I’d ask you a question. Um. I’ve always wanted to know. Like, but. How come everything’s about you? Yeah, I just … I just noticed. ’Cause, like, even down in the comments, like, you’re down there being like, Oh, hey. Like, I … I don’t mean to make this about me, it’s just that … And then you keep going and then, like, I mean, you make it about you. Like, everybody sees you doing it. And so I was just curious, like, how come, you know? And an example would be like, what is an ethnic potluck, right? ’Cause that’s an example of how you’re at the center of everything and everyone else is just an other. We’re just accessories to your enriching cultural experience that you call life, where you just dabble in things and we’re here to let you do that, right? Yeah? Well, if I’m here to just season your life, I’m going to make sure you’re extra salty when I’m done.

—Jillisblack, October 6, 2016

Still, Until

How did all of this start for you? It’s been four years since the beginning they mean, and since then, I have been asked this question more than any other. Wherever I happen to end up, it is always there waiting, always anticipating my arrival before I arrive.

The all of this they mean is my single gram of sub-demographic micro-fame on social media, and the you they mean is Jillisblack, which is the you that I perform on social media. The one who made the Dear White People videos and then later the Dear Black People videos and then later the Dear Jillisblack videos and then, soon, no videos at all. Because I can’t do it anymore. Because I’m changing and she can’t. Because I am an entire person, a much longer story, a more complicated answer. And because she’s nothing more than a minute-long recorded performance of a truth that’s always changing, a script that I’ve sloppily handwritten on copy paper or discarded receipts, an embodiment of the most comfortable parts of my ego, uploaded by me and fed until she is absolutely full of it by their likes.

When Jillisblack starts, there aren’t as many versions of the same thing yet. Not as many bold characters using their boldest language to describe whiteness and what it does or doesn’t do well enough for the kind of people who call it whiteness. I go viral in the summer of 2016, and by the following spring I am one of a million versions of the same thing, selflessly building a platform off the artful articulation of collective anger and grief.

If I want to get shared, I have to go further and further, say more and more. I have to push the envelopes with the letters until I seem like the one who cares the very least about hurting anyone’s feelings. If I post a video on social media and people’s feelings get hurt, what I’m saying must be true. Because the truth hurts, doesn’t it?

Social media can also turn on you, call you out for everything it had initially chosen to ignore or forgive you for. It archives what it has noticed about you for when you betray it. And I know that because I’ve done that. So I know I have to be careful.

The elephants in my room—my obvious proximity to whiteness, the fact that I haven’t mentioned being queer since I became more known for being black (who are you afraid to lose and why?), my refusal (so far) to acknowledge the ways I benefit from colorism, my off-centered mouth and imperfect teeth, my unchallenged masculinity and who/what it could cause me to ignore, my lack of solutions, my need for internet attention, the fact that I can never be as woke as she claims because she’s so desperate to claim it in the first place (and why is that, exactly?), how I don’t even have that many followers, for real (so don’t act like you’re somebody, okay?)—can begin to trumpet all at once.

When we feel betrayed by someone—even a stranger—suddenly we notice everything about them that was always there. Every elephant.

So, in the beginning, it was all about what I was willing to say as Jillisblack. Then it became about what I know better than to say as Jillisblack.

Jillisblack can call out white people (specifically and in general) and America as much as she wants. Jillisblack can question symbols of the black elite, celebrity and (social) media, respectability politics, capitalism, hope, and progress.

Jillisblack can’t call out things people grew up loving or still love or feel represent them and their experience in the world—historical figures, fictional characters, singers, movies, cultural icons, influencers. Even if those things are actually using their money and support to bet against them, to make themselves rich or powerful, to buy their own safety. Even if those things are just extracting the biotic natural resource of their unwavering allegiance and depleting it in the process.

I know because I still love all the historical figures, fictional characters, singers, movies, cultural icons, and influencers that I feel represent me, too. And because no matter how good I’ve gotten at dealing with the trolls, I’m still not ready for a mass unfollowing.

I don’t come close to one until much later, when I announce that I’m married. (Jillisblack can’t announce that I’m married.) Some people unfollow because they think that my marriage makes me complicit in an agenda to destroy the black family. Some people unfollow because they think that my marriage makes me complicit in a heteronormative construct that reinforces tradition and capitalism. Other people unfollow for reasons they don’t bother to tell me.

Jillisblack is a watchful negotiation of these rules.

She starts on a Friday afternoon, in the parking lot of a TwinStar Credit Union. I’m there to pick up my five free checks for the month and record a video for social media. So far, my posts have been about being high or broke or one because of the other. Or they’re about the slightly alternative dating rituals of the slightly alternative and highly ritualistic. Or the common social media practices of exclusive friend groups, bougie and brunching in Brooklyn with grad school tote bags full of travel-size natural hair care products, gently motivational weekly planners, and deteriorating music-festival ticket stubs. Or the unspoken rules of the hip black queer community, inescapably connected by years and years of inner-circle dating and early internet reliance. All the things I know or am, say and do, want or act on. All the mirrors that allow me to see myself in public. And the critique that’s accurate only because it’s really just a confession.

I’m not fashionable, but I make an honest attempt—mostly when I know I’ll see some of you, and/or I know I’ll be photographed somewhere that is social-media-worthy, or when I have a photoshoot with a photographer who posted asking if anyone was around today to be shot in profile in front of a brick wall or a bridge.

But if I could figure out how to get away with wearing Eddie Bauer graphic tees and flare-legged khakis for the rest of my life, I would, y’all. Or rather, I would dress exactly like I did in the sixth grade, but forever. The only reason I don’t is because I know that these days I’m actively attempting an image. And I know that my chosen image comes with a uniform. An aesthetic of sorts. It’s how we identify each other in public/at a Drake concert. I know that I must fully engage with my hair. I know that my bold prints and patterns must be layered and plentiful. I know that my jewelry must be wooden and African and from Etsy. I know that my A Tribe Called Quest T-shirt must be showcased. I know that I must wear outfits that allow for full-body mobility in case I need to quickly share an article or request a Lyft to meet a friend for tea or do some yoga. I know that I must look like I just got back from a life-changing trip to Iceland or like I’m about to go to a music festival where Erykah Badu will be closing or like I just finished watching Love Jones in a college sweatshirt while eating an acai bowl at all times.

I get it.

But this video is different. This day at work has been particularly frustrating, and I’m sick to death of all the good intentions and best practices and identity expertise. I’m tired of programmatic care and fixing something from a distance and the soft whine of gradualism as it stretches to make itself more comfortable in my body.

This time, I’m sitting in my car, in the rain, clutching a few notes about white liberalism and the performance of trying and an eternal promise of soon, almost. And the notes are scrawled on the back of a return envelope for a bill I can’t yet afford to pay, and the rain is almost too loud for what I have to do, so I wait.

But I don’t know how to wait anymore without checking my phone. So I move through a series of evolutionary ticks: text messages, WhatsApp notes, Facebook notifications. Then there’s Instagram, Instagram again, Google Chrome. My last search was how tall is Brandy? I already don’t remember the answer. But, wait. It’s right there—5' 7".

Also, she’s an Aquarius. Which makes sense, even though I don’t really know Brandy like that.

But don’t I, though?

When I’m done, I check my work email. There’s nothing from the large nonprofit where I am employed as a diversity and inclusion educator, no missed call from either of my bosses. They don’t look for me when I arrive late or leave early, because that’s what they do, too. Being mostly unaccounted for is part of the organizational culture.

And when one of my bosses happens to be in the office long enough to see my miserable corner cubicle, dark and unoccupied, my chair tucked, and it seems like maybe I should be there, doing something, my answer is always the same—I’m working remotely.

Even if I had been sitting in that corner cubicle, watching the rain through the one-way window, there would still be only the performance of work, my seemingly transfixed eyes staring at an old email until it was time to go home.

I was hired to ensure that the regional offices were following up on their elusive diversity and inclusion efforts through a variety of in-house training and quarterly committee meetings. I quickly learned that my actual job was to enthusiastically agree with everyone in upper management (via email, Zoom call, or in-staff training) that everything that could be done to make the organization more diverse and inclusive was already well underway. All remaining issues were budgetary, not behavioral.

It’s a job that could be completed in an hour or two a week, but I manage to perform the remaining thirty-six or so hours into a full paycheck.

White people, you’re always educating yourselves. When do you finally just … get it? Because black people have had to learn you so quickly in order to survive, so I know it’s possible. Tell me, why is it taking you so long? Why is it so hard? Why is it costing you so much money? Why do you need so many workshops and trainings and seminars and talks and panels and so … much … time?

When the rain finally lets up, I record my video and get it right in exactly three tries. Then I filter it, caption it, hashtag it, upload it, refresh it.

Okay, two likes. I sit in my car until the first comment comes in. Refresh again. Okay, it’s good. They like it. They’ve noticed my haircut. They’ve tagged a friend.

Good, okay.

I spend five more minutes watching, waiting, refreshing, reading. Then I get out of my car, walk through the rain, and kindly demand my checks.

That night, everything is the same. I cook dinner in my family’s low-income apartment, turn on the music, call everyone in, and we all grab our food and gather. It’s me, my mother, my brother. There are also two matching vapes filled with legal Washington weed for me and Chris, a glass of red wine for my mother. We sit around the long table that we inherited from a stranger and eat our vegetables, talk about nothing, speculate about the government or lack thereof, talk about money or a lack thereof, laugh. Listen to the screaming children who live next door with their screaming parents, and look out at the view of Mount Rainier from the tiny deck.

If only this could be enough for me, for what I want and what I think I’m supposed to be at twenty-nine years old. If only I didn’t need so much attention all the fucking time. If only I could stop romanticizing my own displeasure, disinterest, distance.

But I was going to do something bigger than this one day. Beyond it. Something that wasn’t diversity and inclusion work for an oversize nonprofit. I was going to finally reach my full potential and stop relying on tall tales of its existence.

I can’t die selling my identities to an oversize nonprofit. I just can’t.

So I disappear into