White Folx: Reflect, then Act.
After the horrifying acts of white supremacy, terror, and racism perpetrated over the past few days, I found myself at a loss for words — I found myself numb. During my junior year of college, I took a nosedive into politics and activism by forming a chapter of March For Our Lives to facilitate a conversation about gun violence and the steps we must take to end it. I’ve continued gun violence prevention work ever since, but over time I found myself becoming more and more numb to the mass shootings, racist attacks, and rising gun deaths in this country. As time went on, I found myself becoming similarly numb to the attacks and venom spewed by the anti-abortion individuals outside of reproductive health facilities, the stagnant progress for justice and prison abolition movements, and the country’s apparent rejection of any forward progress or positive change — and the nation’s acceptance of the suffering of others.
If you read my last article, you’ll recognize the name of the person that helped me find a collection of words — not necessarily the right ones — to illustrate the frustrated mess of thoughts in my head. On an Instagram Live, Joanne Molinaro, Esq.(TheKoreanVegan on social media) explained that for her as an Asian-American woman and for many other individuals that face discrimination, it’s okay for allies — particularly white allies — to not know what to say at first. She explained that a lot of people are almost bullied into writing a post or typing a hashtag and while most of us don’t recognize it as such, it becomes a harmful type of performative allyship and performative activism. Joanne expanded to say that for her and many others, it’s better for allies to reflect on themselves, the systems of oppression that allow these things to continue to happen, and any other reflection needed to figure out how to make yourself the best ally you can be. I’ve called out Republicans for the performative words after mass shootings — the thoughts and prayers that seemingly make everything all better in their minds. But I’m guilty of performative allyship and performative activism as well, and it’s taken me a long time to come to realize this. My identity as a young, gay, progressive man doesn’t erase my identity as a white person, and I’ve had to reflect on what I must do to come to terms with the privilege and ignorance that I have as a white person.
White folx: we’re racist, we’re discriminatory, we’re enablers of a system of oppression that has been around far longer than any of us. For many of us — myself included — this is difficult to hear. For a long time, I was the person that would vehemently deny that I maintained any semblance of implicit bias or racism or discrimination, but it’s the life and system of privilege I was born into. Even the movement calling for people to be actively anti-racist has been adopted and twisted by white saviors who engage in performative activism and performative allyship on a daily basis. These white saviors will call out other white people for being racist or discriminatory when they don’t post something within a certain amount of time, they’ll attack others for every little thing they can, but they are saying the right things at the right time for social status — nothing more. The other extreme is blatant racism and discrimination and intentional oppression.
But what’s in the middle?
White people like me. After seeing so much hate, so much discrimination, so much oppression in the world and in this country, I’ve become so numb that I’ve taken a seat and given up. Because I was overwhelmed, because I was frozen in horror and I couldn’t figure out how to help, because I didn’t know the right words at the right time. The thing that I’ve recently come to realize is that it was my privilege that allowed me the chance to take a back seat to these social movements. My privilege that told me I was going to be okay either way because even as a young, queer man, my whiteness still renders me immune from most of the harm the world dishes out to everyone else. I could sit here and blame my conservative upbringing or any other circumstance for me refusing to see the full extent of my privilege for as long as I did, but it was my rejection that there could be anything wrong with what I was doing. I centered myself in the conversations around race and discrimination and justice work. Because there’s no way that I’m racist, no way that I’m enabling a system of injustice to continue, no way that I’m blind to my own privilege.
I’m not alone in this. White people are so afraid to see their faults and recognize the role they play — even if indirectly — in perpetrating harm, oppression, racism, and injustice toward non-white, non-straight, non-male people, that they end up letting their deafness fester and worsen. We have to do better. We have to stop centering ourselves in the injustice of others. If you feel the need to defend yourself as not being racist or not being privileged, you’re part of the problem. I’m part of the problem, too. We all are.
Joanne’s words once again sparked something in me. I realized that I was so focused on finding the right words to say and I was sucked into the harmful cycle of performative activism and performative allyship that I failed to see my own faults and the harm I was doing. It has become second nature for me to post “Enough is enough” after a mass shooting, for my fingers to drift to the ‘share post’ feature on social media posts to put resources and quotes on my feed and stories to play my part. But I’m not actually doing anything. It’s okay that I don’t have money to give, but I haven’t been doing everything I should be to reach out to BIPOC and any community facing hate to listen and learn, to figure out between the things they share and my own self reflection how I can grow to be the best ally and activist I can be.
None of us are perfect. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m more flawed in many ways than I ever could’ve realized. But that’s the great thing about self reflection, right? We can discover and learn and grow and become the best version of ourselves — not only for our own personal growth, but to become the ally and activist that every person of color, LGBTQ+ person, woman, immigrant, and every other person facing discrimination deserves to see stand up and fight alongside them.
For far too long, I’ve denied my privilege and waved the white flag when something gets too hard, too frustrating, too emotionally taxing. No more. Part of recognizing my own privilege is learning to use it to dismantle the system of oppression that exists all around us, learning the extent of my own racism and bias and privilege to learn and listen and develop as an actual ally, not just a performative one. I’m going to fuck up at times and this growth isn’t going to happen overnight. But I know that I won’t stop trying to identify my contributions to these injustices and do everything in my power to be the ally and activist that I need to be. Not a white savior, not a performative activist — an ally.
