Not Any Better

Chania Rene-Corail

A few weeks ago, I received a pretty weird text from a friend —let’s call her Laura. I talked to her pretty often, most of the time to discuss the latest gossip and drama going on at our schools. Nothing important. She always texted me about, you know, who was dating whom, if it was going to last and what people thought of it. Teenage stuf. Well, this day, the message said something along the lines of: “Girl, be careful, Americans are all cray-cray.” Wow. What a nice way to start a conversation. Still, I have to admit, coming from her, that kind of text did not surprise me. Laura had been born and raised in France and did not seem to know a lot about other cultures. To put it simply, she had no flter. I had tried to talk to her about some things that she said that could be ofensive or hurtful, but every time I said something, she would get upset. So, one day, I just stopped trying. I had known Laura for about seven years. We had met at a friend’s birthday party in second grade and she seemed approachable. You know the kind, short blond girl with glasses, a bit shy but still friendly, does great at school, and so forth. Our personalities were pretty similar, but on the outside, it was a completely diferent story. Our eyes, our hair, our skin… We could not have been more diferent. Laura is defnitely one of my closest friends. I miss her a lot and try to call her as much as possible since I moved. And don’t get me wrong, she’s not racist, just a bit insensitive. Ish. She’s a good person overall. Doesn’t stop her from being obnoxious. It lowkey bothered me that my French friends always focused on the BAD things that happened in the U.S., like capital punishment and such. I mean, all my American friends see France as this perfect, beautiful and progressive country. And

it’s really not! Sure, France is nice but not THAT progressive. A lot of crappy things happen there too. For starters, there are so many protests. Sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. And not always for a good cause. One of them, for example, was to keep gay marriage from becoming legal. Honestly, racism, sexism and homophobia are sometimes so present that you can almost feel the tension and the hate foating around you. You just don’t know about it because literally no one in France will admit that their country is fawed. I’ll give this to Laura: guns and the death penalty suck. Still, it doesn’t mean that everything in America is bad. I put my phone down. I really did not want to answer her text. Why would she send a message like this? What kind of person does this? After a few minutes, I decided to be a good friend and hear what she had to say. I thought my message through, trying to fnd the right words. I typed really slowly. Maybe to delay the moment I’d have to start this discussion. I knew that, no matter what, I was going to spark a debate about how France is not better than the U.S. Anyways, I replied something like: “Dude, what do you mean?” I heard my phone buzz. She had answered immediately. I froze as I read the message. Horrible. Terrifying. She said “Girl, a white policeman shot an innocent black man like seven times.”

Dang. Now, you might ask “Did you not know about police brutality? How did you not know about police brutality? Have you lived in a cave your whole life?” The thing is, I did know about it. I just never wanted to admit that it was not a myth, that it was real. For thirteen years, I pushed away the idea that people could be killed because their skin was a bit darker. I pushed away the idea that stuf like this could happen to people who looked like me. But, one day, I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

I will always remember the frst time I actually heard about police brutality against Blacks. About four months before I got that text. May 25th of 2020. An event that afected the world. George Floyd’s murder. I heard some people wanted to make his death look like legitimate defense. That’s bullshit. And I’m weighing my words. Yes, George Floyd was murdered. Kneeling on someone’s neck for eight minutes means deliberately killing them. When I learned he had died, I had just fnished my homework. I heard my mother gasp. Don Lemon was on TV. I actually liked his show. I found him pretty funny. However, this day, none of what he said would make me laugh. I looked at the TV. I put my hand on my chest. Shivers ran through my body as I stood there, unable to look away from the television. My heart felt heavy, as if something kept pushing it down. I wanted to throw up. Shocking. Disgusting. I had felt lost, sad, or even angry before. But this was new. It was like watching a horror movie but, instead of being funny and stupid, it was actually scary. This horrible thing was a reality. I couldn’t act as if it didn’t exist. For the frst time in my short life, I was genuinely afraid. Of course, this wasn’t my frst time dealing with racism. Heck! Now that I think about it, when living in France, I experienced racism a bunch of times. It just didn’t occur to me that something was wrong since it seems to be the norm there. My mother wearing a fancy leather purse with her initials on it always surprised my classmates. But, believe it or not, I can’t recall a single time when a white kid got asked if the Louis Vuitton bag their mom wore was a counterfeit. Systemic racism is everywhere in France. In the United States, I can actually relate to actors, journalists, singers, models, writers and so much more. However, even if I think really hard I can only give you the names of three singers, one journalist and one actor who actually got famous in France while being black. And let’s just say that the French Twitter community wasn’t too happy about the latest Miss France being

black. The white adults I interacted with were often teachers or doctors. The black people I knew worked essential but often lower paying jobs. The high-paying job always seemed to go to white people and I don’t believe it to be due to a lack of will, efort or intelligence from Blacks. I had tried for years to prove to my classmates that this system was fawed but they always thought I was exaggerating things. One day, a boy from my class came up to me and asked me what my average grade was. The answer was pretty darn high. His eyes opened wide and he told me: “Wow! I didn’t think you’d be this smart! With such high grades, you might even become an assistant in a doctor’s ofce or something.” I frowned and furrowed my eyebrows. I’m defnitely not the most educated person when it comes to racism but this still didn’t feel like a compliment. “Could I be the doctor?” I asked. He laughed before telling me not to get cocky. What a jerk. And, of course, my friends did not fnd it too ofending when I told them about it.

As I said before, I didn’t have a lot of black celebrities to look up to when I lived in France. There weren’t many shows about black families either. Yes, we had Everybody Hates Chris and My Wife and Kids. And I like both these shows. But I can say confdently that the latter got streamed in France mostly because it did not trigger matters that were too sensitive. As for the former, it isn’t that well known. Now let me tell you about one of my favorite shows. A show that is produced by ABC. A show whose actors deserve all the recognition in the world. We’re talking, for example, Tracee Ellis Ross, Daveed Diggs and even Marsai Martin, the youngest executive producer in the history of Hollywood.

Black-ish