How I Got Kicked Out of a Facebook Group for Reverse Racism

This story is part of the Internet Time Machine, a collection about life online in the 2010s.

Prelude

It was our mistake, really. I mean, what the heck were we thinking opening up to white women, sharing our lived experiences all willy-nilly in a mixed-race Facebook space? Making ourselves all vulnerable and shit. Nope, we shoulda done kept all that mess to ourselves.

Act I: In which I bring up race

It all started when I posted about how my corner of Istanbul’s expat community was starting to feel like a bubble of privilege and, well, whiteness. Almost everyone I interacted with on a regular basis was North American and white. And I just didn’t feel like I could talk to them about how vendors yelled “Michelle Obama” or “Venus Williams” at me to get my attention at the Spice Bazaar, or about that time I’m pretty sure a taxi driver tried to surreptitiously take a picture of me on his smartphone. He did not seem suspicious of me; I think he wanted to document that he had a real live black woman in his taxi.

Despite a population of over 15 million, the city of Istanbul is pretty racially homogenous. People of African or Asian descent make up a small minority of inhabitants, so we definitely stand out. The expat community here is larger and more diverse in terms of nationalities than any other I’ve been a part of, with women from Dubai, Egypt, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. all represented within my social circle. But expats everywhere tend to be white and affluent, and those in my adopted city are no exception.

Nearly all of us belong to various Facebook groups that help us connect with people from our home countries, share resources, and navigate local life. The largest group for foreign women was a steady resource for me in my four years in Istanbul. I turned to it with questions about everything from where to buy a raincoat that would withstand Istanbul’s wet winters, to last-minute translations that would enable me to return unworn underwear at the mall without major embarrassment.

It seemed like a safe space.

So even though I belonged to a smaller Facebook group for women of color in Istanbul, I posted my feelings about “the bubble” to this larger group. A few people responded, but I didn’t feel like they “got” me. And then Janeen stepped up to the mic.

Act II: In which I am seen

A few days after my original post, Janeen, an African American woman who teaches at one of Istanbul’s international schools, shared a far more positive and thoughtful post along the same lines as my own. She spoke to women like me, who had been the subject of unwanted, racialized attention in Istanbul. She told us we were not alone, and that we were not imagining these racist encounters. And as an added bonus: “You are never obligated to pose for strangers’ photos because they want to document a shared space with a POC.”

Emboldened, other women shared their stories: about being called “çikolata” (“chocolate”) by passersby. One had become a prop for a baby photo shoot when a random Turkish mother put her baby on her lap and started snapping photos. How Turkish parents would point them out to their children as “zenci,” a word that comes from “Zanj,” an African region where the Ottomans sourced slaves during the late Middle Ages. Zenci is also used to describe box braids, a fad among Turkish women, and the salons that offer them.

Janeen spoke for so many of us and we felt seen.

Until the backlash began.

Act III: In which all of the shit hits the fan

Studies show that people project a “false self” on Facebook that diverges significantly from who they are IRL. The exception is apparently white women confronted with black women’s lived experiences of race.

First, they came at us with microinvalidation, negating our experiences with their preferred narratives.

There was the cloyingly sweet let-me-educate-you version: “No, dear, that wasn’t racism. This is how Turks are with all foreigners.” (Please. They’re racist, not blind. No one’s calling white women “cikolata.”) Then came the particularly chafing riff on microinvalidation, straight from the #whitefeminism playbook: “I know how you feel, because I experience the same thing,” a one-two punch that invalidates WOC experiences and recenters those of white women.

Unlike us, most white women can blend in with Turks, at least until they start talking. Blonde women, however, were quick to comment that they do stand out in a sea of dark-haired Turks. They are also associated with sex work, because of human trafficking from Russia, Moldova, and Ukraine to Turkey.

While it sucks to be called “Natasha” when that’s not your name, and/or to be solicited for sex by people you don’t want to have sex with, it is not the same as what happens to black women. That’s because the unwanted sexualized attention directed at us follows centuries of dehumanizing stereotypes that never applied to our white sisters. We were cast as hypersexual “Jezebels” and “Hottentots” in early America, displayed naked on auction blocks and at international fairs in cages with baby rhinoceri. These sick performances helped “prove” pseudoscience classifying us as animalistic, explain how we “seduced” slave owners, and, later, give birth to the ’80s welfare queen icon. So, hard no, Blonde Woman, it’s not the same thing. (P.S.: Stop demonizing sex workers by taking being confused for one as an insult. They are not less than.)

All that being said, there are women in Turkey whose lived experiences are closer to mine. Asian women have been exoticized and fetishized worldwide, and in Istanbul, receive their (un)fair share of stares and unauthorized photo sessions. Anti-Arab sentiments are similarly widespread and documented in Turkey. I was warned against certain neighborhoods where “they” live. Turkey’s economy and love for Syrians have dwindled concurrently — you know, because they’re taking all the jobs. With these women, I sympathize.

By far, the worst commenters were well-meaning white women who thought they was woke. One such woman — let’s call her Mary — suggested starting a class about racism for Turkish women and their children. I commented that this was a fantastic project for a white ally. Mary disagreed. She felt that I, as the target of racism, was much better qualified. And if I was unwilling “to be part of the solution,” Mary wrote, then I was “part of the problem.”

Act IV: In which I call bullshit

This, of course, was bullshit. Asking WOC to take on additional (and almost always unpaid) emotional labor to help white people understand racism reinforces the colonialist narrative that black and brown people live to serve white people. It ignores the hurt, anxiety, and vulnerability caused by racist encounters. And presenting me with two options — either relive painful experiences for white peoples’ benefit or be complicit in racism perpetrated against me — is a power play and an emotional manipulation so deeply upsetting that I can. Barely. Type. These. Words.

I’m prone to depression and I internalize negative feelings, so my initial burst of anger toward Mary quickly calcified into grim sadness and physical exhaustion. It was time to leave the conversation. It might be time to leave the group. It was definitely time to sleep.

The back and forth with Mary had obliterated my emotional bandwidth, but I could still be part of the solution for the other black and brown women in the group. After seeking permission from one of the group’s four moderators — the group’s guidelines prohibit advertising — I shared a link to the fledgling group for women of color in Istanbul, hoping to encourage those who were similarly disenchanted to join it. In my post, I stated explicitly that this new group was a space where non-white women — not white allies — could find solidarity and support. And then I went to bed.

In the morning, I no longer had access to the foreign women’s group.

Act IV: In which I find a happy ending

I learned what went down next via DMs and secondhand screenshots. A group moderator had quietly deleted me after reading the WOC-only clause of my post, because she felt it was reverse racism. I bounced back and forth between emotions. Hurt for being punished. Worry about navigating Istanbul without the random expat intel on the best clinics, or where to buy appliances. Fury that white women can’t just let us have our own spaces. Then, paranoia that reverse racism might actually be a thing, and that I was guilty of it.

But as I scrolled through the pilfered screenshots, the play-by-play blew up my heart. My friend Shay, who is also black, asked where the hell I was, questioned why the foreign women’s group was run by white women, and cussed out everybody before leaving the group. (Love you, girl!) I saw a post from my former workout buddy, Halima. She wrote that she, too, had once thought our experiences as foreigners were the same, but over a thousand treadmill talks later, she’d come to see that mine were different because of my skin color. People posted to my timeline in solidarity. One woman, who I didn’t know, told me that Syrian women had been run out of the group in the past, likely by the same moderator who’d removed me.

Since then, I’ve started my own group for intersectional and feminist Turkish and expat women residing in Istanbul. Shay hosted a soiree at her home on the Asian side of our bicontinental city — the first in-person meetup of the WOC group. We talked about what it’s like to be Egyptian and Kenyan and African American and female in Istanbul. We stuffed ourselves with tacos al pastor, Krispy Kreme donuts, and Shay’s perfectly fried chicken, washing it all down with Turkish wine. In this city where I am a guest, this — this — felt like home.

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