Conversation

Aella
@Aella_Girl
In clubhouse (a voice-only app), I've had the chance to listen to lots of rooms of entirely black people talk, which I rarely get to hear in my daily life. It turns out black people on clubhouse talk about being black a *lot*. They reference blackness in relation to everything.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
It's really fascinating; blackness permeates as an identity in a way I've never heard another ethnicity or nation referenced (but similar to how I've heard Christians talk). It's very tribal, and touches on many aspects of conversation you wouldn't expect to be black-related.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
I felt very intensely 'white' when listening to these groups, when usually I don't notice my skin color if I'm in an e.g., asian-dominant group. It felt very clear that I was *not* in their in-group at all; there was a huge cultural divide that feels explicitly upheld.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
This was all kind of surprising to me; I don't know if this is specific to Clubhouse or if this is the way black people view the world in general? And also why haven't I really understood this or heard people talk about it if it is more common outside of Clubhouse?
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Charlie Sanders
@CharlieSand3rs
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Sampling bias? The average Clubhouse user is a very particular subset, and is not representative of the population at large. You're extrapolating your own context without realizing the atypicality of your experience.
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Robson
@BaltranRelay
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
So what some black people would probably say is that it feels like that for them whenever they hang around a lot of white people. The whiteness of those settings is less explicit and almost invisible to white people because its become a default context. Not so for nonwhite people
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@BaltranRelay
but when i'm with white people we almost never talk about whiteness, and dont relate it to other things in conversations. We just... have conversations. I don't get why black people dont just... have conversations.
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Visa ✈️ NYC (Feb22–Mar13)
@visakanv
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
my guess is that it’s likely specific to those rooms. I don’t think much of my own ethnicity day-to-day as I go about my life but when I’m in spaces like that it becomes the dominant facet. Which can be both comforting and/or stifling depending on the context
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xiaoling
@ling_xiao_ling
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
I echo your sentiment about CH. I believe it’s common outside as well, but prior to this I’ve only gotten bits of such conversation when sitting in an Uber as the only non-black person. The difference is that CH feels like a black space, while most places are white spaces
Asshai Hulud
@Skaterx999
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
There could be a distinction between black people generally, and "the type of black people likely to be on clubhouse" that needs to be explored. I'd never heard of clubhouse before today, so I'm not sure what kind of crowd it draws.