White Faces in Black Spaces

After a year of running a black space on the internet I can confidently say no one has more audacity than white women. Like ritual, once a week I go through all the tagged images on CCBF (Cottagecore Black Folks) and like every single one. It’s a habit I’ve developed since the founding of CCBF. I don’t get to post all the beauty and talent everyone sends me but I can at least show my appreciation in this small way. But this ritual has a second unwanted task: untagging CCBF from images of white women.

Without fail every week a white woman will fix her fingers to type the words ‘cottagecoreblackfolks’ and without shame tag her image, absent of any POC, with the CCBF handle. It’s the pet peeve that makes me lose all professionalism. I can feel a heat rising even as I type this.

But why is this a problem? Well the cottagecore aesthetic is dominated by white women. Type in cottagecore into any search engine and more often than not a white woman will be the first face you see. This is the whole reason CCBF was founded. I was tired of never seeing people who looked like me enjoying the life I wanted. So I created a space where women like me could show themselves living this aesthetic. And while there are other minority based cottagecore accounts, like House of Cottagecore, CCBF still remains the main source of diversity in this aesthetic. Outside of my account Cottagecore is still overwhelmingly cis, white and thin.

But mediocre white women who struggle to compete in white spaces will often go to marginalized spaces knowing their privilege will overshadow their mediocrity. Why compete with Heather when competing with Petrona grants a Karen the extra boost of white favoritism? It’s intentional, malicious and racist. And I’m tired of playing the benefit of doubt game with this particular breed of racists.

Now there will be many white women who read this and fully withdraw their support of CCBF if they aren’t allowed to insert their white faces in black spaces. They will claim their presence is admiration and their attention is validation. They will ignore all other means of genuine support and zero in on this blatant intrusion as the only way to show “appreciation”. It is precisely for that reason we are posting this article.

After 400 years of torture, rape, cannibalism, slavery, separations, gaslighting, criminalization and another 200 years of the same thing under different names the best thing you can do as an white ally is give us some space.