What I Learned First Hand About Blavity Blacks

By:  H.T., Website:  Rogue Black Nerd

I came to learn about the Champagne Sharks Podcast when I was in a group talking about how I was in a crisis of faith with dealing with things regarding women, dating and my personality.  The episode talking about killer simps was a wake up call that I needed to not join groups like Red Pillers or Incels, but my break with other groups that exist on a much more progressive spectrum of things.  One of the things they often talk about on their show is their issue with the group of black people that they call “Blavity Blacks”.  These black people often live lives that for what it’s worth, are still very much uncommon for most black people.  The Blavity Black community in many ways ruins otherwise fun spaces for black people by injecting their annoying righteous self-indignation about things.

Let me start by stating the facts about myself:  I am very much a nerd, I am progressive, and I have a therapist.  The reason I’ve now since taken issue with these Blavity Blacks is that of these things, they ruin them with their insecurity.  The black nerd scene is a scene where the people who run it are so obtuse, opinionated and wrong that when ANYONE challenges them they are deemed undesirable and in many ways forced either to commit to said overall narrative that is pervasive in said community or be blacklisted.  This I believe is why I feel as though the Universal FanCon situation happened; not because the biggest names in the black nerd community are scammers, but because the actual perpetrators saw that with a little bit of jargon and lip service they could get investors in a small frame of time and make off with the cash quick, leaving these said people to have to answer for why they had allowed this to happen to all of them.  Never mind that this occurred because to a conman, this was an easy con seeing that the leaders they got for it were people that have a history of having egg on their face from trusting people who came into the black nerd community to build a platform and were exposed for being frauds or even predators.  These were people that place ideology over logic or even self-preservation, and thus have decided that rather than reform their beliefs, they double down.

For as much as I do not like the article I wrote about black nerd men and dating interracial, I must say that as far as the gender dynamic in the black nerd community goes, it must be acknowledged that like the Blavity Black scene, the biggest names of men in it are men who regularly talk about how other black men are bad.  However, unlike the Blavity Black scene, the depressing thing is that on average, there is a movement among them in the discussion about representation to say that a truly progressive narrative on representation of black people is one that is almost entirely decentralized from straight, cisgendered men.  While I don’t have a problem with seeing more leads that are black women, trans people or LGBT; when the endgame is simply no more of this group within our group, then none of you can sit and wonder why so many black men straight up walk away from the black nerd community and either simply only hang among white nerds or stop worrying about it entirely.  I agree with the host that says that nerd culture does often breed a form of escapism that isn’t always healthy, but for people like men, WE rely on nerd culture not as an escape from life, but rather as just as something fun to do.  The intersection of Blavity Blacks and nerds are the ones that ruin things by making spaces where in the end, even other black women at times feel like they have no place among them as it’s less about fun now and more about browbeating media creators into giving them what they want.  As clear as day pandering as it would be and also as I would imagine just bad writing abound, I feel like these are people that would feel as though Marvel was listening to them if they simply gave them one comic where Beyonce became a superhero.  Keep in mind, The Read lost their collective shit when they were PASSIVELY mentioned in a now CANCELED comic series.  That alone should tell you what kind of people they are when it comes to “representation”.

The biggest issue I take personally with the Blavity Blacks is by far the issue that they have become an independent content creation community that due to being incredibly insulary, and thus playing by rules that in some aspects aren’t even created by them, many black bloggers, Youtubers, podcasters and the like are undercut and even blacklisted simply for not towing the ideological line.  What’s more, the saddest part is that as I saw first hand, the ONLY way to make a name and platform for yourself in said community is to praise the fuck out of black women, setting them entirely beyond reproach in any discussion, and most importantly, you must talk about how black men are terrible.  I don’t like to believe in conspiracies when there is plenty of evidence out there to prove otherwise, but the fact is we live in a time when one black woman can say that black men are the second leading cause of death for black women, another can accuse a world famous pop star’s father of molesting her, and anyone who dares to challenge them on it are called “ashy” or “hotep” or whatever.  You see this is in the critiques of mainstream black media personalities like Charlamagne tha God, as he’s deemed a black woman hater by independent media circles for being like most men in black independent media circles that have decided that the best course of action is to pander, never challenge and always self-flagellate for black women.  Which In turn is why I never sought redemption after being shunned by Blavity Blacks.

The common misconception about me is that I only came to them because I wanted to find a new way to impress women and be popular.  The reality is that I came to their circles, podcasts, blogs and the like because I was and still am a lost man.  I took on the identity of the black male feminist because in my daily life, I grew tired of being around men who on the daily were shitty to women, and thus I came to them to find a way to fight back.  What I found were women on social media giving their hot takes about how men were terrible on the whole and that black men didn’t love them when you could look in their mentions or comments and see BLACK MEN telling them how beautiful they are to them.  The reality is that I think of the Blavity Black women that run things in black independent media, they demonize mainstream urban radio hosts because they act in a way that a majority of black people still act and think like, not realizing that THEY’RE the minority.  Charlemagne’s biggest opponents out here sadly are other black men who clearly only rag on him to curry favor with all the other people, women especially who are mad that he has such a huge platform despite the fact he doesn’t go on the air and talk about things that for the most part are actually not what people would call common issues.

Fact is, the Blavity Black circles of social media are very much esoteric to the majority of black people because in the end, their struggles, or at least their ideas of certain struggles aren’t what people would call common.  Uncommon in that while things like racism are in fact still big issues in the black community, the problem is that these are people who by and large make the hill they choose to die on less about saving their communities and more about being given a chair and plate at the table of white liberalism.  Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the platform of being black among the more far right ends of media is just as bad as in the end, it really is black people being spokespeople for justifying oppression of black people who do not always have the resources to stand up for themselves.  The problem with Blavity Blacks is that while the Uncle Tom will burn down his community for a few dollars and to be seen with white people that openly do not like black people, Blavity Blacks are the black people who are entirely detached from the issues of the black community by design rather than by choice, and what’s worse is that fact they seek to maintain their seclusion while also maintaining the status quo yet very privileged ideals of modern liberals.

Speaking on my own behalf, I can tell you the reason I openly chose to walk away from joining them (especially in the podcast community) was because it became clear that the only way a man was to make it was to no longer question or challenge certain ideals set up by certain people, and that the defense of said ideas, no matter how flawed or incorrect any part of their ideas were, the logic was that we must #listentoblackwomen and #giveyourmoneytoblackwomen and that we weren’t allowed to challenge said views because no matter how esoteric, pointless, or  just convoluted any of these ideas may be, these are people that don’t care about change or fixing said issues.  They want a seat at the table at brunch, getting self-care and bragging about not being like their grandparents in melanin shirts.  And sadly, they are not.  Because for as much as they may have managed to stamp out toxic masculinity, get representation, be sexually free and fight to have jobs that pay well, unlike their grandparents the men are morally weak, they fight each other to be the token black guy, still find themselves raising kids without fathers and still watch as the black community still relies more on outside forces for financial security than to build amongst ourselves.