Psst, white friends! Did you start hearing the slogan “defund the police” a couple weeks ago? Me too! And you’re like, hm that’s interesting, I’ve read some articles and I get it, I even support it, but jeez the name is confusing people and there’s gotta be a better way to say it? I think we can solve this! Here’s my solution: let’s try trusting the folks who have been working on and studying and *living* this issue for literally years, instead of jumping in to substitute our judgement for theirs!
Look, you guys. We are doing the thing white people do so often. We assume that our experience makes us equally or better qualified to advise Black people and other POC on how to express themselves in order to be acceptable to people like us, and what goals are reasonable for them and how angry/revolutionary/loud they are allowed to be in their fight for what we get automatically.
How bout, this time we don’t try to control the vision that they are inspired to fight for, which will incidentally help all of us? How bout, this time we trust and follow their leadership instead of insisting we know better? How bout, if we think other words would help clarify the concept to “winnable” voters, we put our energy into doing that work ourselves to go get our parents and friends and co-workers, instead of digging in our heels til the visionary leaders who got the fight this far agree to do it our way?
Looking at the alternate suggestions from folks like me so far, our way tends to be a pale (ha) and watered down version of the power and provocation that real grassroots leaders are deliberately choosing to put forward. Doing it our way hasn’t worked so well for Black people, has it? They’re still getting murdered in the streets and in their beds by state-sanctioned violence.
For me, it’s time to put my trust in the power and wisdom of the folks who want to fight for this vision and who know way better than me *how* to fight for it. I will put my own words in service to theirs, to help more of my people understand and support their idea instead of trying to replace theirs with mine.