This past week I witnessed firsthand how white progressives are continuing to let down people of color in my local Indivisible group. It was bad. Here is the situation, and I really hope white folks take a breath here and drop their defenses because this is a learning edge for many…
The backstory: There is a local company, Granite Construction, that is putting in a bid to build #45’s wall. The wall is literally a concrete symbol of our country’s xenophobia. Granite Construction has its headquarters in a town that is predominantly Latinx farmworkers. This level of betrayal of our local community by a company that prides itself on being an “ethical business” is absolutely reprehensible. When word spread of Granite Construction's bid, activist groups—majority white activist groups--immediately wanted to protest and quickly organized an event.
This is problem number one, white activists didn’t think to check in with the people of color living in the community and those who would be most affected by the wall. Now, I think there is a lot to be said about white folks taking responsibility for the mess we’ve made and initiating actions that combat bigotry. I organize Black Lives Matter stands and I feel like that calling out systemic racism, that I have benefited from, is my duty as a privileged white person. However, when I am organizing or standing at a BLM event I am a white person speaking to other white folks (primarily), I am not speaking for black folks. In the situation with Granite Construction, it came off as white folks trying to speak for ‘the voiceless.’ But of course, they aren’t voiceless, white people just haven’t created the space to hear them. This needs to be one of the primary objectives of white progressives: using our privilege to amplify the voices of marginalized minorities. With issues that exclusively affect any specific minority group we need to remember to first seek out organizations led by those communities and support their work.
Only a couple hours after the news of the protest spread the Chicano/Mexican-American rights group, the Brown Berets, reached out and respectfully asked that the protest be canceled and that instead we join up with the protest they had already been planning. One of the group’s members wrote a very clear letter welcoming all protesters while also explaining why it was important that the POC in the community that will be most affected, take the lead on organizing the event. The statement was written with care, thoughtfulness, and clarity; it was pretty easy to take in and agree with…or so I thought.
Unfortunately, as is typical when a POC takes the lead, some white folks got uncomfortable and apparently one person went as far as saying they felt “excluded.” I didn’t hear from this person directly so I’m not sure how they got there—maybe they heard a poor description of the letter secondhand, something got lost in translation, and then they came to that conclusion? I don’t know. (If they read the letter themselves and had that reaction it would be a much more fucked up example of white fragility.) Whatever the case, we know that in the big picture this is such a common reaction when white privilege is challenged that it needs to be addressed as such. There is an adage that has become well known in anti-racist circles that speaks to this:
When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression
Every white person needs to know this quote, memorize it, and check yourself before responding to situations involving POC and your hurt feelings. White people are used to being the ones in power, we are used to setting the rules, and we are used to being included in everything. That is what our white privilege has got us accustomed to. Of course, people of color--along with other marginalized minority groups--have an entirely different daily experience. To be a person of color in this country is to, in some form or another, have to figure out how to exist within the dominant white culture; if for basic safety if nothing else. Well, it’s our turn now. If white folks want to be true allies and want equality, we need to not only support but help create space for POC to take leadership, that is one of the responsibilities that goes along with our privilege. We may, despite our best intentions and personal wokeness, even need to relegate ourselves to the sidelines at times. We are not the center of the Universe, everything is not about us, and our feelings are not comparable in importance to the equal rights and empowerment of minorities.
If white progressives aren’t willing and wanting to do this work, we are going to have another movement created by white people for white people, even if we have every intention of being inclusive! Intentions don’t really matter with this stuff, white privilege is too blinding, we have to hear other voices. It can be painful, and will almost surely be uncomfortable for most of us white folks to sort through these feelings of ‘where do I fit in here?’ We are allowed to have those feelings, what we can’t give ourselves permission to do though is to take our pain to the doorsteps of minority groups that have been living with that shit their entire lives and then expect them to help us with our hurt feelings. That is not ok. Don’t do it.
Hearing this white person felt excluded, the member of the Brown Beret’s was then put in the position of having to bend over backwards to make sure white people felt included. If he didn’t, he was risking having a low turnout at the protest and more significantly, run the risk that any POC faces routinely in matters like this-- that the misinterpretations of what he said would be used against the entire Latinx community (“they don’t want us there,” “they are unfriendly,” “they are racist against white people,” etc). White folks have a long history of pointing out what one POC has said/done and then jumping to conclusions about an entire ethnic group based on that one person. That is the bread and butter that keeps white privilege and power fed. Don’t do it.
So he wrote another post, again explaining that everyone was welcome and that this was just a matter of the local community and POC taking leadership on this issue. This is what then proceeded (I didn’t take a screen shot but feel confident in my memory of this, though there might be small discrepancies)…
Me: “I thought you made that very clear in your first letter and am sorry you had to deal with this all-too common reactive response from white folks.”
Rhonda: “Seriously? From one white person to another white person, YOUR FEELINGS DON’T MATTER AS MUCH AS POC’S LIVES.”
Not that hard to understand, right? Like, that’s the least we could say. The least. But predictably, white privilege and fragile feelings struck again. Again!
Rebecca: “So now we have white people wanting to start a race riot against other white people. We are fighting the orange faced cheeto people here, focus people, focus.”
If you are white you may be thinking, is this really a big deal? We need to stay unified!
I get that urge for unity, I really do. But the absence of conflict does not equate to unity; it just means we aren't dealing with the conflicts right in front of our faces, or we aren't hearing all the voices. So YES, this is a big deal. Do you see what Rebecca did there? She not only dismissed the acknowledgment that Rhonda and I were trying to offer the member of the Brown Berets for going above and beyond to explain in a civil way why this issue is important (he had every right to be frustrated and angry at this point, I would’ve been), but she painted us as anti-white because we wanted to hold white people accountable for how they interact with POC. As if being aware of how our white privilege affects others is inherently anti-white. She may have well screamed “all lives matter!” It’s the same thing. It is the inability for white people to have any self-reflection, any accountability, without it being seen as an all-out attack on white people, divisive, or ‘reverse racism’ (which is not a real thing, FYI). We will never, ever, be able to overcome white privilege and racism until white people can take an honest look at our privilege and our reactions/bias towards POC without getting so defensive. There is no change without that uncomfortable, painful, humbling, self-work. And when we can’t see it ourselves, we need to call one another out on it.
Before I was able to respond to Rebecca about how I am focused, focused on fighting ignorance that unfortunately is not neatly contained within the republican party, the member of the Brown Berets decided to delete the thread. Of course he had every right to self-protect and just stop the bullshit, I am actually really glad that he did that for himself. My sadness comes from imagining what he must have been feeling to delete that post, and from feeling like we, white progressives, collectively let him and the Brown Berets down. We were given a test and we failed. This is deeply disappointing to me and is still weighing heavy on my heart.
As a progressive movement, we need to recognize and work through these examples of privilege and ignorance as they arise. We need to realize that we all have work to do, it’s not just them. Many of us have been learning recently about how the feminist movement historically has not been inclusive and intersectional enough. We saw the consequences of this at the Women’s March, when many women of color rightly objected to the false sense of unity promoted by the march. We have the chance now to create a truly inclusive movement, but that requires the willingness to dive into difficult conversations and be corrected when we are wrong. If we avoid that, we will create yet another movement that only works for a select few.
White progressives, we need to do better. And we can.
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