Let Me Borrow That Real Quick: A History of Never Giving It Back
They didn't want to be us. Just close enough to wear it, sing it, post it—then walk away before the cost showed up.
By Taylor Allyn
Disclaimer: If this doesn't apply to you, it shouldn't offend you. But as the saying goes: a hit dog will holler. If you felt the bark, maybe examine the bruise.
June 20, 2025
The Questions That Cut Through
The video above from what I assume is from the late '80s early ‘90s—a Black girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, looking straight into the camera with the kind of clarity that only comes from seeing clearly:
"If your white skin is so beautiful, then why do you go to the beach and burn yourself to a crisp trying to get brown? If it’s so wonderful to be white—if you love your thin lips, why are you going to the doctor getting collagen injected but say my lips are too big?……If being white is so wonderful, I don’t understand why all these white teenagers don’t stay white?"
Out of the mouths of babes. Truth that adults spend lifetimes avoiding.
She was excavating something her elders couldn't name yet: the central contradiction of a supremacy that proves itself inferior through imitation. Every tanning bed. Every lip injection. Every attempt to rap like us, move like us, be us—a confession that the hierarchy they've defended is built on a lie they tell themselves.
Practice Makes Perfect
My father taught me two things from the time I could understand words:
"Practice makes perfect."
And: "What God has for you, nothing and nobody can take away."
At eight years old, I thought these were just sayings. Now I understand they were prophecy. The first prepared me for their world. The second anchored me in mine.
Practice makes perfect, he'd say when I wanted to quit soccer practice for either being the only Black kid on the team or the amount of what I could imagine army-level scrimmage (the latter). When the Division C Whirlwinds were dominating our tier, full of talent—me holding down defense with speed and quick feet, sometimes pushing to mid, later moving forward. When I complained about running drills until my legs gave out, doing homework twice to make sure it was right, being "on" all the time in ways that seemed to exhaust other kids.
But we kept practicing. Division C champions became Division A champions. Same players, minus a few—but the bones of Division C held strong. Never lost a game. The foundation we built in the bottom tier, that defensive discipline, that collective excellence—it carried us to the top.
He was teaching me the tax on my existence. That mediocrity wasn't available to me. That I'd have to be ten times better to be seen as equal. But what neither of us realized then is that somewhere in all that practicing, I actually became ten times better.
And they? They became ten times more afraid.
A Costume Cut from Flesh
They love to dress like us. Talk like us. Mimic the pitch without carrying the frequency. Archive the moment but not the memory. And when the beat fades, they unzip it—like it was never stitched into skin.
For us, there is no zipper.
White America has always needed a mirror. And it keeps choosing ours. From lips to lingo, rhythm to reference—they step inside the architecture of our bodies like it's a boutique. They want the cheekbones but not the burden. The style, but not the surveillance. The swagger, but not the sentence.
They didn't want the culture. They wanted the curation. A costume, cut from flesh, worn for likes.
But what they keep forgetting—what they always forget—is that for us, this language wasn't designed. It was inherited. From grief. From joy. From having to speak through closed doors. From dads who knew we'd need every tool in the shed just to survive their world.
The MAGA Mirage
They voted for nostalgia. Not policy. Wrapped themselves in red hats, Bibles, and revenge fantasies—and called it patriotism.
But they were never promised prosperity. They were promised proximity. To whiteness. To dominance. To feeling like they still mattered.
And now?
The fields are empty. The poultry plants sit half-staffed. The jobs—those "American" jobs they claimed were stolen—are posted like clearance items on Facebook Marketplace:
$11/hour. 7 days a week. No healthcare. 30-min lunches. Must be a American citizen. Must have driver's license.
Words they never imagined typing. Because they knew—deep down—who was doing the labor. Undocumented. Invisible. Essential.
And they voted them out. Or scared them off. And now they stand in the ruins, asking where everyone went.
They never wanted the job. They wanted the status of someone else losing it.
The farmer posting that job ad isn't just desperate for labor. He's confronting the reality that his entire identity was built on the fiction that those jobs were "beneath" him. The undocumented workers didn't steal his job—they were the job. And now he has to face what he actually is: someone who needs others to do what he won't.
The Confession I Don't Want to Make
I've been watching them panic, and the truth I don't want to admit is how good it feels. There's something in me that wants to say: Now you know how it feels. Now you know what it's like to question if you deserve what you have. Now you know the particular terror of having to prove your worth every single day.
But I'm lying when I say I don't want to admit it. I do want to admit it. I like seeing the chaos. I like watching what they thought would hinder the people they needed to do the work they don't want to do—it's happening to them now. And while I should feel bad, I don't.
They need to get on their knees and start tending to their farm. But do they even know how? It's almost like when Black and brown women take care of their kids—when we leave, they panic because they suddenly remember they have to parent and they don't even know their child's name.
They built systems designed to exhaust us, exclude us, exploit us. And now those same systems are demanding they show up. They're asking where everyone went, posting job ads that read like slave labor manifestos, wondering why no one wants to work for nothing.
They want us to fix what they broke. Want us to teach them how to do what we've been doing while they claimed credit.
Here's what haunts me: enjoying their fear doesn't feel like power. It feels like justice. And maybe justice and revenge don't just wear the same face in the mirror—maybe they are the same face. Maybe that's what my dad couldn't prepare me for: the moment when watching them drown feels like breathing.
There's still this part of me—this tired, eight-year-old part of me who had to be ten times better just to be seen as human—that wants to say: How does it feel to finally have to earn it?
And I'm not ashamed of that part anymore.
Built Nothing. Claimed Everything.
They say they "made" this country. But show me the callus. The blister. The blueprint. They love to quickly want us to "get over it" or "my ancestors did it, I didn't" but are the first to claim they made this country. Well, which is it?
Watch them in real time: posting "heritage not hate" Confederate flags while taking credit for the Constitution. Celebrating July 4th while telling us slavery was "400 years ago, move on." Claiming pride in "American innovation" while denying reparations for the hands that built it. They want to inherit the glory and archive the shame, curate history like an Instagram feed—post the achievements, delete the receipts.
But truth doesn't have an algorithm. And reckoning doesn't have an unfollow button.
Because what they claim as legacy was built on the backs of people they wouldn't share a table with now.
Enslaved Africans tilled the wealth. Chinese migrants blasted through mountains. Latinx labor paved the roads. Black women raised their children and were erased from the photo.
They say "grit." We say "grift." They say "earned." We say "inherited."
While I was learning to be ten times better, they were learning to be ten times more entitled. While my dad was teaching me to practice for perfection, their dads were teaching them to expect it without effort.
The panic we're seeing now isn't about reverse racism. It's about performance anxiety on a generational scale. It's the terror of having to compete on merit for the first time in their lives. The terror of realizing they built their entire identity on stolen valor—and now the internet won't let them control which parts of the story get told.
What God Has for You
My dad's second teaching runs deeper than practice. Deeper than their systems. Deeper than their hierarchy.
"What God has for you, nothing and nobody can take away."
This wasn't just comfort. This was spiritual intelligence. He knew the difference between what they could control and what they couldn't touch. Between what was temporary and what was eternal. Between what was borrowed and what was given.
They've been panicking about losing what was never actually theirs. Meanwhile, I've been accessing what was always mine.
White supremacy was always built on a lie about ownership. They thought they owned the land, the labor, the culture, the power. But you can't own what belongs to God. You can't steal what's divinely ordained. You can only borrow it until the reckoning comes.
Their power was always temporary because it was stolen. Mine is permanent because it's given. They have to maintain theirs through force. I access mine through faith.
The Borrowed and the Given
They can borrow our culture. Appropriate our style. Mimic our movements. Copy our creativity. But they cannot borrow our relationship with the Divine. They cannot appropriate the foundation our ancestors built in prayer and practice. They cannot steal what was written in our DNA before we drew breath.
This is why they burn themselves brown—because somewhere in their souls, they recognize that the light they're chasing was never in their skin. It was in our spirit.
This is why they inject their lips—because they know the words they're trying to speak were never meant for their mouths. They were meant for tongues trained by survival, sharpened by necessity, blessed by endurance.
This is why they're melting down about merit—because merit was never about skin color. It was about soul strength. And they've been coasting on the assumption while we've been building the foundation.
The Reckoning and the Return
My dad taught me to practice for their world, but trust in God's plan. He knew the difference between what they could control and what they couldn't touch. He was preparing me for both.
That teenage girl in the video saw what we're all seeing now: the mythology crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions. The hierarchy revealing itself as performance art. The supremacy proving itself inferior through desperate imitation.
They didn't want to be us. They wanted to orbit us—without ever carrying the weight. But now the orbit has collapsed. And what they're learning, finally, is that proximity was the privilege. Not the prize.
Practice makes perfect. And we've been practicing for this moment our whole lives. While they were borrowing, we were building. While they were consuming, we were creating. While they were taking, we were receiving—from a source they can never access, never appropriate, never take away.
What God has for us, nothing and nobody can take away. Including the excellence born from oppression. Including the wisdom earned through struggle. Including the inheritance that was always ours.
They can keep borrowing. But they can never own what was given.
Let that be enough—for now.