Again, I’ve altered the text but hopefully not the meaning, to avoid people going looking, unbidden.
Do you know how far I have had to internalise racism?
Do you know that you behave around me in a way that makes me a ‘coconut’?
Do you know that I ‘act white’ to keep everyone comfortable?
Do you know that I put up with abuse from white people and BAME people because I ‘pass’ and ‘suck up’?
NB: ‘Coconut’ is like ‘Oreo’ in American slang, ‘white on the inside’, whatever that even means.
Do you know how far I have had to internalise racism?
No, because that’s your own internal thought process and I’m not telepathic. I’m also not sure I buy ‘internalising’ racism (or misogyny etc) as I think it denies people’s agency and self-understanding. I’ve never been too fond of the idea of ‘false consciousness’, whatever the context, despite its occasional utility and even rarer accuracy.
Assuming it’s mean in the same way that ‘internalised misogyny’ is mean, it doesn’t seem – from the outside – as though you have. You don’t seem to accept it, or have racist attitudes about yourself and you seem to resist them in others (and that’s not a new behaviour). You even, gratifyingly, in this set of questions, acknowledge racism in the BAME community.
Do you know that you behave around me in a way that makes me a ‘coconut’?
I don’t think I have that kind of power over you (or anyone else for that matter). You make yourself who and what you are. I treat you as I strive to do anyone else, as an individual human being.
Helen Pluckrose, academic involved in Sokal Squared, put this well recently:
I refuse to attach any social or moral significance to race and I think I largely succeed at doing that. I also oppose people who do attach any social or moral significance to race on ethical grounds.
I don’t treat you as ‘white’, because I don’t believe there to be such a thing as ‘whiteness’, nor ‘blackness’, nor ‘brownness’ nor any other similar thing. I dare say I have much more in common with you than I would with someone from a Wolverhampton council estate or a Sussex manor house, colour be damned.
Do you know that I ‘act white’ to keep everyone comfortable?
No, and I don’t think you could if you wanted to, as there is no ‘white’ way to act. There might be a ‘British’ way to act and there’s a ‘middle class’ way to act, but there’s no single ‘racial’ way to act. If you are trying to be a pantomime ‘white person’, please stop!
Do you know that I put up with abuse from white people and BAME people because I ‘pass’ and ‘suck up’?
The wording is a little confusing here, making it sound like both BAME and ‘white’ people are both giving you shit for ‘passing white’ and being a suck up. I can believe that, given the ‘absolute fucking state’ of middle-class ‘white’ activism these days, but it’s unclear whether that’s what you mean, or more conventional racism.
The racism you get from BAME people for not being BAME enough, that I believe 100% and it’s the aspect of all this I find absolutely the most wearying and disappointing about the whole thing. The hypocrisy of the racist anti-racists. I mean, you (hopefully) read my previous post about my friend from Guyana, that whole ‘colourism’ thing is dumb as heck.
I’m more interested in culture, because differences are fascinating. When I meet someone I like from a different culture I try to learn something about it. The food, a few words of the language, a few concepts unique to that culture, whether it’s pepperpot stew from Guyana or the concept of ‘sisu’ from Finland.
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Grim's Tales 
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