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Yesterday I woke up at 7:30 am fully ready to enjoy a relaxing, guilt-free Turkey Day since I was starting my day off with a cycling class that was hard AF. Instead, I ended up defending my blackness at the end of the night as I came to terms with the fact that I’m not quite as Black as I thought I was. Let me explain.

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My solo Thanksgiving plans turned into a day of “Girl Interrupted” when a friend of mine whom I’d already given the answer of “Nothing” to when she texted me, “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” a week ago texted me at 10 am saying she was going to a restaurant around 2 pm and wondered if I wanted to come. I declined, but I couldn’t sit in my house like the Grinch that stole Thanksgiving with a full pan of macaroni and cheese in my fridge because I don’t know how to cut a recipe in half and other fixings I planned to make that afternoon just for myself and have her off at a restaurant alone for no reason so I told my amiga to come through.

I’m guessing it was the fact that my friend told me she doesn’t like sweet potatoes in any form that made me think she’d be an easily defeatable opponent in the ultimate Black trivia card game Black Card Revoked — because what Black person doesn’t like sweet potatoes? But if I was smart, I would’ve taken into account the fact that she arrived at my house at 3:30 pm when I asked her to be there at 1 pm and said to myself she’s “Blacker than youuuuu” (in my Beyoncé 7/11 voice). There was also that moment when I offered my friend a small bowl for her greens so juice didn’t run all over the rest of her food and she looked at me like I had a third eye which should’ve been an indicator her Black ain’t like mine. But I sojourned on and proudly broke out my Black Card Revoked game cards ready to whoop some a–. That’s not exactly what happened.

I started out falsely overconfident when I answered the question, “According to Mama: What does it mean if your hand itches?” with the correct response verbatim. And the rapper to whom the lyric “Last time he checked he was the man on these streets” should be attributed to was a no-brainer for me since I’ve proudly declared this time of year #SnowSeason. However it was right around the time I couldn’t properly recite Mike Jones’ phone number — it doesn’t begin with 231 by the way — and I had to take a wild guess on a question about Coming to America (which I just saw in its entirety for the first time earlier this year) that things went downhill. It was only due to a coincidental conversation last week that I knew what LL Cool J was looking for in an “Around the way Girl,” and by the time the Metro Boomin’ references came around and I had to finish a Future lyric I somehow didn’t know I was finished. I not only lost my Black card but my trap rap queen title was promptly revoked as well.

Once the trivia was over our gathering turned into a game of “Let’s name all the Black references Brande doesn’t know,” and I realized there were far too many of them. The trivia game was also a reminder I need to brush up on my contemporary and historical Black history after choosing the wrong city as the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and taking a bit of a stab in the dark about where Michelle Obama earned her undergraduate degree. Don’t judge.

Despite now having a racial identity crisis, I highly recommend you break out this game — the first and second editions — the next time you and your people come together. As fun as it was just playing with two people, you can really get into some great Black debates by playing in teams and using the Majority Rules cards where everybody has to come to a consensus on answers to questions like “what do you eat on your grits?” and “who’s the funniest comedian of the last 20 years?” Trust me, it’s a lot more fun than talking about the election and explaining why you’re still single during the holidays.

Check out all the editions of Black Card Revoked here.

 

 

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