I’m in a big tight-knit facebook group about a shared interest that shall not be named, to preserve everyone’s privacy. Last week, it exploded into a very painful and acrimonious fight in which Black and Latinx participants called out the racism that they had been experiencing in the group’s online interactions – and a handful of other participants, mostly white, insisted they were not being racist, including accusations that the people of color think their own so-called “races” are superior. I was busy with work deadlines, I didn’t know what to say… and then finally I couldn’t stand my own silence anymore, not for any reason.
I wrote a big post, and was touched and grateful to hear from several folks across a wide range of racial identities that it was meaningful to them. I somehow doubt I’m the only white person in a group where this is happening lately, so I’m sharing this anonymized version in the hope it may be helpful to you as well in some way:
Friends, I’ve been pretty quiet in the battle that has erupted here in the past week or so. I haven’t known what I could possibly add that would help to support and protect our Black and Brown members who are being hurt and marginalized here, and/or help some of our members (especially those who are white-identified) move towards seeing how we are participating in that harm. But I believe it’s important for white folks like me to try and stand up in moments like this, to break the centuries-long patterns of silence, avoidance, and prioritizing our own comfort over the literal lives of Black, Indigenous, and people of color in this country. So, I can’t promise that this will be helpful, and I can’t promise to moderate the comments as strongly or as well as may be needed, but I also can’t abide keeping silent.
Speaking to our Black, Indigenous, and people of color members who have trusted our group space — and trusted their own strength and solidarity — enough to tell us some truths about the silencing, racism, anti-Blackness, and also misogyny intersecting with their full identities that they are experiencing here: I see you, I respect you, I believe you.
Speaking primarily to our white members who are feeling attacked here, because that’s been part of my own experience too: I want to offer what I’ve experienced personally about a different path we can all take.
When a person of color tells me about something that I or someone else did, which is part of a larger pattern of racism, I have found that it is much less painful and much more freeing for me to take that as an opportunity to learn and try to do better. I am not a fundamentally bad person because I did something that perpetuates racism, or because I didn’t see how someone else’s action perpetuates it. What I am, is someone who has spent nearly 50 years being trained by a billion factors around me in our culture to think and behave in ways that hurt Black and Indigenous people and people of color individually and structurally.
Hopefully the good part of being the type of person who participates in an online interest group is that I want to keep learning. And what I want to learn every single day of the rest of my life is how to see the racism that our culture has trained me to ignore, and how to do better. I wish I could say that I always respond with gratitude when someone points out how my actions and beliefs are part of racist patterns; I know I don’t. I will say that I can think of several specific instances where I have managed to do that, and they have been among the most important learning experiences of my life, far more so than anything I learned in school.
Speaking to [the specific individuals reacting angrily to being called out]: I acknowledge that your pain is real and it matters too. One of the things that white supremacy culture teaches us — OK, speaking for myself, one of the things that I personally learned from my own formative experiences in this culture — is that people are disposable, and can be thrown away when they “malfunction.” This is also something that I am trying to unlearn. And remember, I just told you above that I do things that are racist, have spent my whole damn life doing them, am trying every day to do fewer of them and know that I will always continue to make mistakes. So I’m not in any position to say that people who say or do racist things are intrinsically evil people.
But the pain that we experience from being told about our mistakes is not equivalent to the pain we cause by doing them, whether intentionally or not. And when people are angry at us for hurting them, that is a totally reasonable reaction. So, looking at some of [called out person’s] statements, for example calling people Black or Brown supremacists and equating anti-racism with the KKK, those actions are unacceptable and worthy of the anger and sadness people are expressing in response.
And what do we do when we hurt people, even unintentionally? When we step on a toe or bump someone so they spill their drink, even when we interrupt them while they’re speaking? We apologize. That’s what civility calls for in a situation where we have done harm. We apologize and try not to do it again, even though we know we can’t promise never to step on anyone’s toe ever again. If the reason we did it is part of a pattern, we try to change that pattern.
Asking for an apology and asking for changed behavior as a condition of continued participation in a group is not throwing someone away. That is civilization itself — at least, when it actually prioritizes *equally* the real pain of Black, Indigenous and people of color with the pain of white people. That’s a level of civilization that we have never had in this country where we have always put the comfort of white people first, with gradations of supposed human value from white people at the top to Black people at the very bottom.
Did not expect to write this much. Do not have any idea what to expect from posting it. Could not be someone who stays silent. Hope this is helpful, fear it will not be, but offering it with love to all who want to take it in that spirit, and especially to our Black and Latinx members. You deserve better than to have your voices disrespected and your lives devalued. We all do, but “all” doesn’t happen until it’s true for you as well as for me.
Black lives matter.