Crash Out With Me.

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The first time I learned what white tears could do, I was 12 years old.

I was at a church sleepover. Ironically, I'm an atheist now and I'm sure there is some connection in my psyche, we can unpack that at a later date.

it was the kind of sleep over with pillows all over the floor, pizza boxes stacked in the corner, youth pastors trying to be cool and for some reason we were being asked to fast for 48 hours.

The next morning my mom picked me up the next morning for a soccer game and was bringing me back later that evening for night two. When I walked back into the church, I was immediately pulled into an office. I remember feeling confused before I even sat down.

You know that feeling when you walk into a room and realize everybody already believes something about you before you’ve spoken? That feeling.

It's a feeling that lives somewhere between the walls of your chest and the pit of your stomach, and it's a feeling I have come to know well.

I was accused of stealing candy.

And the wild part is I barely remember the candy itself.

I remember the feeling more than anything. Sitting in a folding chair trying to explain myself while realizing nobody actually wanted an explanation. Over explanation to the point it starts to sound like you're lying.

They wanted a confession. I kept saying I didn’t take it. Didn’t matter. I wanted my mom. Didn't matter. I wanted to go home. Didn't matter. I was told I was lying. I was told stealing was sinful.

Days later, the truth would come out. It wasn’t me, big shock. It was the pastor’s daughter, bigger shock. A white girl. She stole it. She blamed me. Because she lives in a world where she knew she could.

No one ever apologized, they just left me alone with my 12 year old brain to figure out how to ensure I wouldn't almost go to hell again.

That’s the thing people don’t understand about racism.

Sometimes the most painful part isn’t even the accusation itself. It’s realizing how quickly people were willing to believe it. How little evidence people need before Blackness becomes suspicion. How quickly the mob is ready to form, foaming at the mouth because this is what they wanted all along.

An enemy.

That feeling follows you. Into schools. Into workplaces. Into relationships. Onto the internet. Because this is what it is like to exist in America when you're Black.

Guilty until proven innocent.

Recently a post on linkedin gave me that same feeling in my chest.

Not because it was true, but because I have lived this story before, as many of us do, over and over and over again.

A woman posted I had been bullying her, harassing her, stalking her, doxxing her. Even though the post itself barely held together if you read it critically for more than thirty seconds.

Apparently I was harassing someone while simultaneously ignoring them. Apparently posts were anonymous while also somehow leaking someone’s address. Apparently content that never named anyone was still somehow unmistakably about one specific person.

Ironically, I have posted about lots of topics over the last week, performative allyship, scammy coaches, when people try to take ownership of Black excellence, MLM level course offers-- never mentioned names, never will, it wasn't out of the norm content for me.

Yet, this person felt attacked.

And if everything was anonymous and false, what exactly would make someone think it was about them?

QTNA, but that's for another newsletter.

That alone should’ve made people pause. But they didn’t. My follower count kept dropping.

And I know that sentence is going to make some people uncomfortable. But discomfort does not make something untrue.

Look at it. Screenshot it. Remember it.

We have centuries of evidence showing us what happens when white womanhood is positioned as fragile, endangered, or in need of protection while Black people are framed as threats.

Emmett Till was 14 years old.

A child.

In 1955, a white woman named Carolyn Bryant accused him of whistling at her in a grocery store in Mississippi. That accusation alone was enough. A few nights later, men kidnapped Emmett from his family’s home, tortured him, murdered him, and dumped his body into the Tallahatchie River.

His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, made the decision to have an open-casket funeral because she wanted the world to see what racism had done to her son.

The images were horrifying. They changed history. And decades later, Carolyn Bryant admitted key parts of her story were fabricated.

But Emmett Till was already dead.

And obviously, no, I am not comparing LinkedIn peacocking to lynching.

I am talking about the mechanism. This behavior is systemic, it is a pattern, and it is seen in history over and over again. The system allows white women’s fear gets treated as fact. The system sees Black people as having to prove we are harmless before we are allowed to be human.

The system allows white tears activate protection while Black pain gets cross-examined, questioned, and tossed away.

The scale changes. The system does not.

Another example people love to reduce to a “misunderstanding” is Amy Cooper.

In 2020, Amy Cooper called the police on Christian Cooper (not related), a Black birdwatcher in Central Park, after he asked her to leash her dog in an area where dogs were required to be leashed.

Amy felt called out, so what did she do? Weaponized her tears, because she knew she could.

Suddenly she sounded terrified.

Fragile.

Panicked.

She told police an “African American man” was threatening her life while he calmly stood there recording the interaction.

What so many of us understood wasn’t just the lie, it was how instinctive it felt.

How quickly she understood that white womanhood could become protection while Blackness became danger. Because history has shown us over and over again that sometimes a white woman’s fear is treated as enough evidence on its own.

What made the Amy Cooper situation even more unsettling was that she had previously served in DEI-related leadership roles, which is a reminder that proximity to diversity language does not automatically dismantle bias.

Your favorite ally might just be cosplaying. Racism has gotten incredibly good at rebranding itself. The racist 'ally PR tour is at an all time high. Racism earned therapy language. It learned corporate language. It learned words like “harm,” “safety,” “boundaries,” and “accountability.”

It learned how to sound progressive while still reinforcing the same old systems underneath.

Underneath all of the polished language, the story is still often painfully simple: a white woman is uncomfortable, and a Black person becomes a threat.

A white woman feels called out, a Black person becomes a threat.

A white woman feels backed into a corner, a Black person becomes a threat.

A white woman realizes their lies are starting to unravel, a Black person becomes a threat.

The post isn't the thing I find to the most concerning, because it is truly expected. What was exhausting was watching people who claim to care deeply about 'anti-racism' immediately abandon critical thinking the second a white woman started crying publicly.

Even when Black people in the comments said, “Hey, we see through this,”, it was argued tooth and nail to defend it. Then later, many of those same comments quietly disappeared once they realized how ugly they looked.

Which honestly feels very internet in 2026.

Say something harmful loudly.

Delete it quietly.

Pretend it never happened.

I think that's somewhere in the cosplaying allyship playbook.

When the poster was asked about their use of AAVE, they doubled down with reason after reason about why they could use it.

They love Black culture. Black aesthetics. Black language. Black audiences. Black engagement. But the second Black people become disappointed, angry, direct, or critical, suddenly we become threatening.

They immediately jump to their proximity Blackness as a defense mechanism instead of actually listening to Black people in the comments telling them the post was harmful.

“I have Black friends.” “I’m an ally.” “All I do is help Black People".

Saying “I have dozens of friends in the Black community supporting me” while actively dismissing Black people telling you your behavior feels harmful is not allyship. It’s using Blackness like a character witness.

And the wording itself is giving me the BIG ICK.

Not “my Black friends.”

Not “Black people I care about.”

“The Black culture.”

Like Blackness is a place you visit instead of people you’re accountable to.

Acting like Black people are a character references instead of community isn't the flex you think it is.

I will say it over and over and over again, one of the most dangerous forms of racism is the kind wrapped in the language of allyship, because it feels safe. It is harder to identify. Hard for people to call out. They just feel like something is off, but they can't quite figure out what.

It doesn’t sound like hatred. It sounds like concern. It sounds like safety. It sounds like “protecting communities.”

It sounds like carefully curated LinkedIn language, sharing and interacting with Black folks posts to look supportive, and DEI buzzwords and references to Malcolm X while still reproducing the exact same dynamics Black people have been warning about for generations.

That’s what makes performative allyship so harmful.

It gives people just enough progressive language to disguise the harm they’re causing while still centering white comfort, white innocence, and white protection the second accountability shows up.

Racism that knows DEI terminology is often far more dangerous than racism that announces itself loudly, because people struggle to recognize it while it’s happening in real time.

Like I guess thanks for not capitalizing white, but have you examined your actual biases?

Also, a shoutout to Aubrey Blanche for always letting me scream into the void, because I've been screaming about this in her DMs for months.

Something wasn't right, I couldn't place it. Was I being too sensitive? Was I leaning into my own biases?

Was I wrong? (Plot twist, I was not wrong, not even close).

Quite frankly this is exhausting because Black women are constantly expected to perform emotional perfection in public.

I wasn't sure if I would write it about it because what threat do they come up with next? How will they intentionally try to harm me next?

At the end of the day I'm a woman trying to make a living, not a multi millionaire, not a celebrity, not a white woman floating through life in a bubble.

I have to make money on this app, their is risk in me speaking up, always.

I am not perfect, I don't claim to be. I am an admitted hater. I don't like everyone. I don't always get it right or say the right thing. Yet we have to be calm enough. Soft enough. Nice enough. Palatable enough.

We are expected to survive harm gracefully or people stop seeing us as victims at all.

As somebody who works in psychological safety spaces, I need people to understand this clearly, psychological safety does not mean freedom from discomfort. It does not mean nobody criticizes you. It does not mean accountability feels good. And it certainly does not mean Black women are required to remain perfectly composed while being publicly accused of harm.

It doesn't mean you are owed repair, conversation, or an explanation.

I know what happens when internet narratives stop being internet narratives.

In 2021, I was doxxed. People showed up at my home. Not in a fake post rage bait way, but in a real way.

When someone publicly attaches my name to allegations of harassment, intimidation, abuse, and danger, I do not have the luxury of pretending that is harmless internet discourse.

Words have meaning, words have consequences, words write history.

Black people know how quickly the internet becomes real life.

Especially visible Black women. Especially outspoken Black women. Especially Black women who refuse to make themselves smaller to preserve white comfort.

The hardest part of all of this wasn’t strangers believing it. Strangers project all day long online. It was watching people who know me hesitate.

Any one who has followed me on this app for the time that I've been here knows, I don't name names, i name systems, I name behaviors, I name what needs to change.

I don't platform losers.

One person texted me afterward and said this situation was “a reminder that in HR there are always two sides to every story.”

That's not how racism works. Maybe that story would make sense if I had actually been interacting with this person at all. But I hadn’t spoken to them in months. Hadn’t texted them. Hadn’t called them. Hadn’t commented on their content. Hadn’t named them publicly.

Nothing.

And still, the assumption quietly became: “Well, Madison probably did something.” This was a person who has known me for years, has met my mom, listened to me cry, and has eaten ice cream with me on their couch.

But this is often looks like now, presumption. The presumption that Black people are probably guilty. Probably hostile. Probably aggressive. Probably dangerous. Probably did something to agitate the person with the crocodile tears.

Experiences like this shape the way you move through the world.

You over-explain yourself. Over-soften your tone. Over-document everything. Add smiley faces to emails that should’ve just ended with periods. Rehearse perfectly reasonable conversations in your head because you know directness can suddenly become “intimidating” depending on who’s receiving it.

People call that professionalism. We call it survival.

If you want the future to look different than history, people need to stop treating white discomfort as objective truth.

Discomfort is not danger. Criticism is not abuse. Accountability is not harassment.

Yet, we live in a world where many find it easier to threaten legal action, call the police or dog whistle their way out of accountability.

We notice the patterns. We notice how quickly some white women escalate to legal threats, HR complaints, police involvement, or public victimhood the second accountability or shame enters the room.

Instead of accountability we get dramatacized hot takes.

Not because they are actually unsafe. But because being uncomfortable feels intolerable.

Instead of sitting with that discomfort, reflecting on it, or allowing themselves to be wrong publicly, the response becomes escalation.

Call the police. Threaten legal action. Frame criticism as harassment. Turn accountability into danger.

Because once a white woman positions herself as afraid, society has historically rushed to protect her first and ask questions later. And Black people know all too well what can happen in the space between those two things.

Instead of seeing us as humans. They see us as threats. They assume we're angry.

They assume, they assume, they assume.

And to be fair, I am very angry.

Stop assuming Black anger automatically makes us wrong. I live in America of course I'm angry.

The danger of white tears has never just been the tears themselves, it’s what society is willing to do in response to them.

And Black people have spent generations surviving the consequences of emotional dysregulation being mistaken for a real threat, while our reactions to it were believed to be the true risk.

So before you instinctively defend the tears, ask yourself a harder question: who had to survive the consequences of them?