FULLABALOO: Tulane student discovers she can be bisexual and racist simultaneously

Mulatto Forever, CEO of Bulschitt LLC

Gabriel Clark-Clough | Contributing Artist

This article is for The Fullabaloo, The Hullabaloo’s satirical April Fool’s issue. The information and interviews below are completely fictional and for entertainment purposes only.

College is a time of great personal discovery when many self-truths may come to light. At Tulane and institutions across the world, students constantly experience eye-opening moments they will remember for the rest of their lives. The moments of self awareness shape us as individuals irreversibly.

This moment came for Alla Baster, Tulane senior, after an argument with her black roommate, Kelsey Daniels, when she discovered she could be both bisexual and racist at the same time.

“It hit me like a St. Charles streetcar pulling up to its stop,” she said. “Slowly and way later than it should have.”

“We were in the living room, and I was playing Kanye West’s album real loud, like right after he made those slavery comments,” she said. “My roommate told me to stop, and I was like ‘it’s good music! I don’t care who made it, I just appreciate the art.’ And she was like ‘well then, why don’t you let me play Lil Uzi in the house?’ And I was like, ‘because he’s homophobic!’”

According to Baster, after this comment, Daniels stormed out of the living room. It took a few months of contemplation and Daniels’ decision to sublet her lease for the realization to hit Baster. But once it did, her life would never be the same.

“I spent months being like, why’s Kelsey always so mad? Why does she make everything about being a victim? It’s just music! And then I saw this post about racism on my Instagram explore feed, and I understood.”

What exactly did Baster understand?

“It basically said gay people who only care about homophobia, but not racism, are kind of contributing to racism. Usually when I read stuff like that, I’m like ‘yeah, I’m glad I’m not like that.’ But when I read that post, I suddenly had a flashback to that conversation with my roommate [about music]. And then it hit me.”

“I feel so bad,” Baster continued. “For months, I was thinking that she’s just aggressive for no reason. Like, lighten up! Not everything is about race. And I always thought that me being bisexual absolved me from being racist to people of color, since we’re both oppressed. But then I realized I might not totally get what she’s going through, because I’m not black. It was such a huge realization for me.”

The Hullabaloo reached out to her ex-roommate, Kelsey Daniels, to tell her side of the argument. Daniels expressed that it was also important to share what led up to her decision to sublet her lease.

When asked about the situation that led to her ex-roommate’s revelation, Daniels said, “We’d talked about the whole Kanye thing before. And for some reason that day, she decided to play him real loud when her boyfriend was home, like I wouldn’t say something about it. Yeah, she got bold with it.”

“She started making fun of me for not being able to separate the art from the artist, but when I asked her why she refused to let me listen to Cardi B in the house because she said some weird stuff about gay people, she got real confused.”

When The Hullabaloo asked Daniels to clarify her ex-roommate’s assertion that the musician in question was Lil Uzi, she said, “She only knows of like three rappers off the top of her head who aren’t Tyler the Creator or Brockhampton, so she just comes up with random names if it’s not one of them.”

Elaborating on the experiences that caused her to move out, Daniels said, “I have white friends so I didn’t think living with one would be a problem. But living with her was a really odd experience. Like, I would come home sometimes really upset about bad experiences me and my friends had at Tulane on the basis of our race. And she would tell me how to handle racism from her perspective as a bisexual woman. She’d say, ‘As a bisexual woman, I wouldn’t have handled it like that, but …’”

“She even made fun of me for talking about being biracial,” Daniels said. “It didn’t really make sense to me, because she talked about being bisexual every day. But I left it alone.”

On her ex-roommate’s realization, Daniels said, “I actually couldn’t tell because she’s been kinda weird around our mutual black friends since I moved out. But I’m glad she figured it out eventually. That’s good for her.”

When The Hullabaloo reached back out to Baster for any additions to her ex-roommate’s story prior to publication, she declined to comment.

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