When you start to read this article, you’re probably expecting to read a feminist thesis on anti-white descrimination…This voluntarily polemical title seeks only to speak of a subject that is finally little touched on: the discrimination suffered by the white belts in BJJ. If you feel discriminated, White Belt, raise your head and puff your chest, we are going to talk about you!
Who are the white belts?
The debate that comes up systematically when it comes to rank is that of the value of the belts and the level they require. Talking about belts given prematurely or sandbagging (staying 12 years at purple belt to win competitions when you should have already been brown for example) is such a polemical and recurring theme in BJJ. But this article does not talk about the meaning of the belts or the white belt that has been around for four years and has been submitting all the blue belts at the academy for a while.
We are talking about the real beginner, the one that started during the season, the real white belt! What do we have against the white belts? To be rough, to go at 100% in every roll, to be obsessed with the idea of having a higher graded instructor, being dangerous to themselves and to others, in short, To be a calamity on the mat. Is it discriminating to say that? No, it is based on a statement shared by the whole Brazilian Jiujitsu community. A white belt does not know the rules, does everything wrong and tires everyone because they don’t understand anything. But guess what? The higher belt carries a heavy secret that he tries to forget: that one day, too, he used to be this white belt!
I do not roll with white belts
This saying is widespread among the higher belts. I am the first to tell any white belt girl who comes to my club “do noy roll with any male white belts”, as a higher belt, I forbid myself to think like that. Like everyone else, it tires me to roll with white belts that want to fight and imagine that they will be able to smash me because I am a woman (women and old people are used to this attitude).
But then I remember when I was white belt. Some actually made the effort to work with me while I was a rough heavyweight judoka! Today, I thank them by rolling also with the white belts. When a beginner with 100kg of muscle arrives in an academy, it’s embarrassing that no higher belts offer to roll with him..
That a purple belt of 60kg refuses to roll with a white belt, let’s admit it, but there is a kind of condescension towards the less-ranked. Some will argue that a white belt does not have the right to ask a higher belt to roll, but who do you think you are?! In judo, my teacher Bruno Louis taught me in my childhood: “One never refuses a partner”. In jiujitsu, it is allowed to refuse a roll, probably because it does not inherit the Japanese tradition of the “march or die”, and it is coherent, but this sometimes leads to unjustified contempt. White belt, you are a victim, you know, if you do not know yet, it will not be long, but you deserve respect!
Higher belts, the white belt is a little bit like your little brother, he’s reluctant to follow you everywhere and does not stop doing stupid things, but tomorrow he will perhaps be taller than you then, be nice with him ! Especially as he may be able to one day beat you…
White Belts are people too
With an eager eye, he patiently looks for a partner on the mat. He does not dare greet a higher belt so he waits that there is no one left to roll with the one who remains … Because he is one of those who remains. The one that’s left is a white belt like him … But with about 20 kilos more…
It’s not easy every day to be a white belt in Jiujitsu, because whether you see it or not, you’re a victim. You’re going to wage wars with other white belts and get ignored or mistreated by higher belts. Everyone says that you are a spaz (they are right, sorry), but it is a fact demonstrated by science: the white belts are also human beings! A brand of Jiujitsu boasts the slogan “White Belts are people too” (“The White Belts are also human beings”). Such as baby turtles, all the white belts will not reach the shore. It is up to us the higher belts to throw stones on the birds so that the baby turtles don’t get eaten!
Written by Claire-France Thévenon for Jits.fr (translated from French)
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