You Don't Look Black

“You Don’t Look Black”: The Most Dangerous Kind of Friend

I’ve had white friends. Good ones. Real ones. And I’ve had the other kind — the ones uneducated about racism who say they are friends, yet say things like “you don’t look Black” or “you’re not like them.”

Those are the most dangerous things an uneducated white person can say to a person of color.

Because it sounds like a compliment. But it’s not. It’s a test I didn’t ask to take.

“You’re not like them.” Who is them? The Black people they’re afraid of? The ones on the news? The ones they cross the street to avoid? So if I’m “not like them,” what am I? A pet? A trophy? Proof that their racism has an exception?

“Do I look accepting” than a darker skinned person? Is that the question? Is my lighter brown, my curly-wavy hair, my mixed face supposed to make you comfortable? Am I Black Lite — same great flavor, less threat?

That’s not friendship. That’s you telling me the only version of me you can love is the one that’s closest to you.

Then these same white people use religion as a basis for their insecurity or clear hatred toward the Black race or people of color. They’ll post a blonde, blue-eyed Jesus on Sunday and then tell me I’m “one of the good ones” on Monday.

I hate to break it to you: Jesus was a man from the Middle East. His skin was darker. Not Black, not White — Middle Eastern. Olive. Brown. He walked the desert sun. He wasn’t passing for a surfer from Orange County.

And many people today would probably not sit with Jesus because He was too dark than White. They’d ask Him “where are you really from?” They’d touch His hair without asking. They’d say “you’re so articulate” like it’s a shock. They’d follow Him, sure — but they’d want Him to be quiet about Rome, quiet about justice, quiet about the poor.

That’s what these “friends” do. They want a Jesus they can control and a Black friend they can contain.

I am biracial. Black and White. I’ve been told I’m “not really Black” by white people who think that’s a gift. It’s not. It’s erasure.

I don’t need you to tell me I’m different from “them.” I am them. I am the daughter of a Black man who was out of the picture until I was grown.

So don’t use my face to excuse your fear of theirs.

Don’t use God to baptize your bias. If your Jesus can’t sit with the darker-skinned, the accused, the unhoused, the “them” — then that’s not Jesus. That’s an idol with your face on it.

Real friendship doesn’t need me to be less Black to be safe. Real faith doesn’t need God to be less brown to be holy.

You don’t get to love me and hate my people. Because my people are me.

And Jesus? He’d sit with us. All of us. Especially the ones you call “them.”