Conversation

Realizing a ton of folks fundamentally do not understand intersectionality, or how white supremacy and power are related. This isn't an insult, I'm just kind of surprised. Because how else do you explain these people whose understanding of race and power is that there are white people and "the oppressed" or "POC" and that those are the two groupings of who has power and who doesn't.

This flattening of systemic power has allowed for all kinds of wildly simplistic bad takes. Folks are desperate to distance themselves from whiteness so no one can accuse them of being "racist".

Like people really don't get that there are levels to this shit. That "POC" is such an absurd category that it has basically no meaning.

Lemme give an example. If I'm analyzing white supremacy and discussing how someone's actions are antiblack, and that person throws out the fact that they aren't "white" they are only "white passing" and Latine... The fuck does that have to do with antiblackness? As if Latines ain't some of the most antiblack folks around. As if there aren't white Latines. As if colorism doesn't exist, as if proximity to whiteness doesn't exist. Ditto for East Asian and Southeast Asian groups too (and I know, I know!! I just talked about oversimplifying. But they all antiblack as fuck, so. anyway)

And for my fellow mixed-with-white folks... Listen. I know what it's like to question your race and what it means. I know how proximity to whiteness can fuck your head up. I know what it's like to live with that particular brand of racial trauma, of feeling out of place etc.

But fucking listen. Your insecurities, while not of your own making, ARE NOT AN EXCUSE TO TRAFFICK IN ANTIBLACKNESS. GO TO THERAPY AND DO SOME READING ON INTERSECTIONALITY AND COLORISM. YOU ARE STILL ABLE TO CAUSE A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF HARM. LIGHT SKIN IS A MASSIVE SYSTEMIC ADVANTAGE AND YOU NEED TO STOP TAKING YOUR ANGST OUT ON BLACK FOLKS WRIT LARGE BUT ESPECIALLY DARK SKINNED PEOPLE. YOU DO NOT HAVE A MONOPOLY ON INTERNALIZED RACISM AND HAVING TRAUMA IS NOT PASS TO UPHOLD WHITE SUPREMACY.

A lot of y'all get frustrated when we try to take the conversation beyond simplistic categories like "privileged" and "oppressed" and just try to bin the whole thing. You need to do more reading and listening. You need to make space for yourself to feel uncomfortable and called-out during this journey of learning.

Every time you don't want to process your guilt and you instead choose to take it out on a Black person? That's colonizer behavior. Every time you feel impacted when a Black person is talking about shit white people do bc it's stuff you do too, and you just disengage because you can? That's colonizer behavior. Every time you get upset because a Black person is mad at you for being racist so you go crying to an authority figure so they can put the Black person in their place? You guessed it, that's fucking colonizer behavior!!

You've got to do better. You do have the ability to help prop up the system of white supremacy, but you also have the ability to start unlearning that awful shit and try to destroy it instead. Ask me how I know.

Public

Notices

Feeds