This is not a regular feature on this blog, but this week Black Twitter made me laugh-because-it’s-true and then it broke-my-heart-because-it’s-true:
#GrowingUpBlack
#GrowingUpBlack grandma’s House pic.twitter.com/pZ1gEMVj0Z
— Common Black Girl (@CommonBlackGirI) July 17, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack When U Was On Punishment…This Was The Only Thing You Had To Play with pic.twitter.com/NKwzGO9ckU — OG August LaFlare (@Ya_Boy_Crump) July 18, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack when you’re the only black kid in class & they’re talking about slavery & the Civil Rights Movement pic.twitter.com/NAptFaSSES — Zach Brown (@ZachMorganBrown) July 17, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack BBQ supposed to start at 6. You get there at 7, food ain’t ready & they asking you to help decorate. pic.twitter.com/tc0GEfy333 — Cirque du SoBae (@brownandbella) July 16, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack when u see yo mama pullin up and u forgot to take that meat out the freezer like she told u hours ago pic.twitter.com/CkXD6Jvete — Common Black Girl (@CommonBlackGirI) July 15, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack This was the correct sweetening process for all Kool-Aid preparation. pic.twitter.com/6Tlr3CoGe7 — Son of Baldwin (@SonofBaldwin) July 15, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack “I ain’t one of your lil friends”
— Common Black Girl (@CommonBlackGirI) July 18, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack u better eat while we here cuz i aint cooking when we get home.
— Common Black Girl (@CommonBlackGirI) July 14, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack “I was leaving it to soak” -Every black kids excuse as to why they didn’t wash that pot in the sink.
— ✨ (@hideousmary) July 15, 2015
When you drinking kool-aid outta the welch’s grape jelly jar with the cartoons on it #GrowingUpBlack — Mark Anthony Neal (@NewBlackMan) July 15, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack your parents having more of their friends at your birthday party than you — King (@_Thundercleese) July 15, 2015
#GrowingUpBlack you heard this on several occasions pic.twitter.com/GgaoW2YGqk — Kimberly Renee (@reelsistas) July 14, 2015
And then, after the news hit that Sandra Bland had died in police custody:
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody PLEASE don’t let the police claim my history of depression and suicide led me to kill myself. It is a lie.
— Terrell J. Starr (@Russian_Starr) July 17, 2015
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody don’t try 2 use my background and education to say I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve it without degrees either — E. Little (@ItsMrLittle) July 16, 2015
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody protest. I would want you to fight. Because if they took me they will take others.
— Swaggy P Newton (@Desmond_JaMaal) July 16, 2015
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody I did not shoot myself while handcuffed in the back of a police car. I did not try to sever my own spine. — #JusticeForTamirRice (@essdotX) July 16, 2015
#ifidieinpolicecustody look under my fingernails. The skin of the person who killed me will be there…
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) July 18, 2015
#Ifidieinpolicecustody Do not make calls for peace or forgiveness. Do not speculate about my mental state. I’m Black and constantly enraged. — Charlene Carruthers (@CharleneCac) July 17, 2015
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody the White & Black media would never let you see this picture & they’d blame me for my death. pic.twitter.com/0M4NTCSMxW — Bougie Black Girl (@BougieBlackGurl) July 17, 2015
A country where a hashtag like #IfIDieInPoliceCustody can trend has lost any claim to being a democracy. — Sofia Quintero (@sofiaquintero) July 17, 2015
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody don’t trust any report of me being aggressive, I put my humanity aside in interactions w/ cops to come home to my kid — jamilah (@JamilahLemieux) July 17, 2015
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: Twitter: #GrowingUpBlack and #IfIDieInPoliceCustody.
See also:
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Abagond 
“A country where a hashtag like #IfIDieInPoliceCustody can trend has lost any claim to being a democracy.”
I think this text could be your next header image.
On a lighter note, sitting in the corner for punishment, leaving pots “to soak”, and drinking out of jelly jar glasses are white kid things too.
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Abagond, I re-e-eally needed this today because, as you said — it “made me laugh-because-it’s-true (Hell, I’m STILL soaking damned pots!) and then it broke-my-heart-because-it’s-true (particularly this: …protest. I would want you to fight. Because if they took me they will take others. And this: Do not make calls for peace or forgiveness. Do not speculate about my mental state. I’m Black and constantly enraged.)“
Thank you so much…
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The growing Up Black twitter and the #If I Die In Police Custody by Sandra Bland was kind of eerie even though all the things listed like Shooting one self while handcuffed and Bougie Black Girl tweet about the black and white media would never show this picture. Because the media likes to do character assassinations. Then Miss Bland’s untimely demise makes the hashtag even Of If I die in police custody even more heartbreaking and real. We can’t trust our law enforcement anymore.
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There was one that cracked me up because I said it to my kids last week.
Kids: Can we have McDonald’s
Me: Do you have McDonald’s money?!
Lol
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Everybody’s grandmother had plastic on their furniture and arriving to the bbq and nothing is prepared and they want you to cook or do some work that drives me crazy.
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And every black kid has had the Papa Pope speech about being twice as good or better than the white people speech.
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Ms. Mary,
MY house had plastic on the furniture for the first 10 years because nobody (kids) could explain where the big red stains came from – even though I told them not to eat or sit their little 8&^% in my living room 🙂
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@Linda: I know that’s right but that has always been funny to me that everybody mentions that.
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..The plastic on the couch, drinkin’ Kool-Aid out them Mason jars, having to decorate when the party is already running late, yes to all of these childhood experiences for me (especially when I was in my birthplace, the South)!
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my fave tweets about growing up while black were the ones about having a lot of plastic bags and u either stay outside or u stay inside don’t waste my cold air lol or u better be in the house when the street lights come on.
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when we get in the store don’t touch nothing. That is so true I still remember my mom telling us that. And I remember when we were young and my brother was hyper and we went to the store and he was touching everything and an undercover store security started following us around and we left my mom was like see that’s why I told yall not to touch anything.
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mstoogood4yall: Those are funny especially in the Summertime adults yelling at kids to either stay in or out and not wasting the cool air conditioning. I have yelled that at many of the members of my family when they were younger. And the plastic bag thing i am guilty of that as well.
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I definitely remember the plastic covers on my grandparent’s furniture.
Also, having that ONE uncle whose idea of saying grace was “good bread, good meat, hey man let’s eat.”
#memories
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@bygodsloveandgrace: LOL
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@ Mary I couldn’t resist! I loved some of these tweets.
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Lord of Mirkwood, its not a plastic bag, it’s plastic covers for furniture. They were relatively custom fit to cover individual cushions or the contour of the piece. Popular in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a strange way of keeping your furniture totally clean by never actually sitting on it directly.
I can remember seeing covered furniture in the late 1990s that was from the ’70s in absolutely showroom condition! This would also extend to things like lamp shades. Tables and dressers also often had glass covers cut to size. Grandparents were particularly fond of this method of preservation. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if archeologist one day uncovered a few plastic-wrapped coffins somewhere.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
Not a joke. The stuff on #GrowingUpBlack is way more realistic than what you see on television.
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The plastic bag trick is actually pretty common away from the black community. It’s a matter of working hard for the furnishings and not wanting them to get messed up. But in few years the plastic covers find their way off the furniture….
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Speaking of elderly Black women with plastic covers on their furniture, remember this video?
(https://youtu.be/WpYeekQkAdc?t=1m49s)
It’s a great song, too! Not just the tune and beat, but the lyrics were on point as well.
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@ mary
yeah, my grandmother would lock the door and put some water outside for us when ppl kept going in and out. And the butter containers she would put leftovers in it lol.
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“And the butter containers she would put leftovers in it lol.” @mstoogood, That’s a tradition passed down to me that I still do to this very day-the
mystery” Country Crock box..what’s in it, spaghetti? green beans? corn bread? The possibilities are endless! hahaha
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Some of the hashtags are a laugh riot! I can relate to many of them! The plastic covers on the furniture reminded me of when I was growing up. The crinkly sound of the plastic and how it stuck to my skin when I was sweaty! LOL! I can only speak for myself but the Asian families I knew thought plastic covers were so posh!
I chuckled over the BBQ food not being ready at a certain time when you get there. Omg! There is something similar in my culture. It’s called Filipino time. When an invitation to a party says 7pm, a lot of the guests don’t show up until 9! Hahaha!
Another thing, you don’t know how often I forgot to defrost the frozen meat for my mom so she could cook when she got home. She always shook her head and would sigh in her language, “This child….” LOL!
And it’s sooo true about the parents having more friends at their child’s birthday party! At my 16th birthday, I invited all my friends, and my parents also invited their friends. I swear my party looked like it was for adults and the teenagers were party crashers. ROFL!
I smiled about the sugar in the Kool Aid mixture. My immigrant mom would buy those little Kool Aid packets. Grape was her favorite and I remember with fondness when she would offer guests grape “juice”. LMAO!
The part about being one of the few persons of colour in class is on point. I remember in the 7th grade when my teacher discussed Pearl Harbor under attack and ALL the white kids turned around to stare at the few Asian kids with disapproving eyes including me.
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Just a comment to the person who tweeted “This can’t be a democracy” .. I’ve been told this is actually supposed to a constitutional republic with democratically elected officials. In a republic those officials should follow the rule of law. Which obviously they don’t. That seems to affect poor minorities more often, but we (the 99%) are also in the same boat and could all be killed by cops or the feds with no justice served.
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I’ll quote Rand Paul “the bill of rights is not for the high school quarterback or the prom queen”
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I should clarify that.. The privilege that comes with being the most popular doesn’t mean that someone in law enforcement or government or big business could still have a personal vendetta against the quarterback or the prom queen, so it is for them too. They just don’t need it (rights) as much.
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