#state of the union address

Some white privilege occurs so perfectly in the wild, that you just couldn't make it up. All you can do is catch it, put it on display, and try not to slip into the cage with it by accident. Cuz it will not pet you or protect you and a bullet damn sure can't kill it.

So, rewind. My friend from law school is getting married. We'll call her K. She and her fiance, J., have been together since college, and are pretty much my dream couple. I mean, they are fly as hell. See for yourselves.

I mean.....gahdamn. They are fly. Take one note: my friend's fiance, J., is fairly light-skinned, but grade A black. We'll come back to that.

As you can see from this engagement photo, the couple is bomb and the wedding is about to be lit. It's going down Labor Day Weekend in Houston, where J.'s family is from. Bookmark that too. As occurs for every good millennial wedding, we all brainstormed and helped the couple come up with one of the more fun parts of the wedding—the hashtags. We settled on #StateoftheUnionAndress and #HappilyEverAndress, Andress being J.'s last name.

#StateoftheUnionAndress

A couple of days ago, my friend receives a direct message from a stranger on Instagram. The message is from a young white woman, who greets my friend, K., as if they are familiars.

"Hey girl!!"The two exclamation points are hers, not mine. She then proceeds to white privilege all over my friend's DMs.

"You don't know me but"

(annnd you should just stop there because if you have to write "you don't know me but," you certainly should not be following that statement with several lines of text and you DEFINITELY should not be "hey girl!!ing" me, but whatever)

"apparently we have the same wedding hashtag!!" Again, I leave the second exclamation point where I find it. Actually, just read it yourself.

So.

Yes. This white woman—for now we will call her Senkerz—who doesn't know my friend from Adam, believes that she is reasonable and justified in finding her on Instagram and asking her to change her wedding hashtag because she "already had it printed on [her] save the dates and wedding invites." It's unclear if she is talking about the #StateoftheUnionAndress or the #HappilyEverAndress hashtag, not that one over the other would make her any less silly.

First thing that is problematic: when did the wedding hashtag wars begin? I had no idea that wedding hashtags had come to this level of importance in the grand scheme of vows, dress, venue, food, marrying the right guy, or whatever. Maybe I'm behind. Granted, the closest I am to getting married is watching Say Yes to the Dress marathons, but still. I was unaware of the primary role that the wedding hashtag played in the marital bliss of white women on Instagram.

Then, after extensive stalking internet investigation, we were able to find Senkerz's wedding website. The plot proceeded to get Jill Scott level thick. Her wedding is on October 1st. K. and J.'s wedding is on September 4th. Even though their wedding is earlier than Senkerz's, the white privilege whispering into her ear softly still told her that she shouldn't be the one to change her wedding hashtag. I mean, they nigras anyway so being on Hillary's CP time and shit, they probably haven't printed their own save the dates or invitations for their wedding that is happening a month earlier than yours....right?

The request is facially ridiculous. At this point, I think a name change is warranted. No longer will we refer to white privilege incarnate as Senkerz. We will now refer to her as #BasicBecky. #BasicBecky was out here on Instagram white privileging in the ways that #BasicBeckys do. Because even though #BasicBecky "already printed" her hashtag on her save-the-dates, invites, and forehead, when I googled #StateoftheUnionAndress and #HappilyEverAndress, the few results that showed up were related to K. and J.'s wedding, not #BasicBecky. So clearly #BasicBecky has been too busy patrolling what the coloreds are doing to use her own precious hashtag a single time.

By now, as we are all up and through #BasicBecky's wedding website, we can't help but notice that her wedding is also in Houston. "Creepy," one of my friends comments in our GroupMe. The bride then comments, "mad creepy. I hope this man's [#basbecky's fiance] family doesn't have any ties to J.'s family, if you know what I mean."

Remember we bookmarked how fair skinned J. is? Well, hopefully you been watchin' the new Roots (please do, it's so necessary), so you know what kind of "ties" we tal'm about. Y'all, think about this. #BasicBecky is marrying a white man from Houston, with the same last name as K.'s  super-light-skinned black fiance from Houston, and they could very well be related in the sad way that many of us dark (some not so dark, because) folks are tied to our less-melanated peoples. And #BasicBecky, in that position, decides that it is her Andress wedding that should get the hashtag, that deserves the accord. She asks tells my friend to use a backup hashtag for her own Andress wedding, happening in less than 3 months, so that #BasicBecky can be happy and not have to do any additional footwork and have her perfect white wedding and monopoly over her new last name and her wedding hashtag and her rightful place in the big house.

Nah.

For the first 89 years of this country's existence, the majority of its black population was held in slavery. Slaves had no legal rights, and their marriages were not recognized under the laws of the United States. Slaves were only "married" with the permission of their owner(s)—who could, and often did, still sell them away from their families at any time. Even after emancipation, black marriages were subject to the constant threat of rape or murder, which, when committed by a white person against a black person, was practically unpunishable. It was by the (limited) grace of the former slave-masters and their progeny that black marriages existed with any longevity, if not security.

Nowadays a white person is more likely to bemoan the "problem" of single-parent households in the black community than to be directly responsible for creating one. Still, this woman may very well be marrying the descendant of J.'s ancestors' former owner(s)/rapist(s). So when she tells that black man's fiance, my friend, to take a "backup" hashtag...well. It's about time for another name change; let's call #BasicBecky Lady O'Hara. Why? Outside of the obvious slave and master analogy? Because, when Lady O'Hara says that she already had the hashtag printed on her save the dates and wedding invites...weeeell, "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Dedicated to all my Texas Bamas dealing with white privilege in the best way they know how—middle fingers in the air.