To My White Friends, Not my facebook friends, my real friends. Those of you who get that being White comes with both privilege and blinders, who acknowledge that our own lives would be worse, however awful we think our lives are, if we didnt walk in the world as White people. Those of you who understand that we can only grasp intellectually, not experientially, what it is to be systematically oppressed and killed because of our race. Of course all lives matter. I dont know anyone who disagrees with that. But right now, today, the state is targeting Black lives, and Black people are stopping that. When you whine that this is a broader problem, youre right, but youre also wrong. Youre wrong insofar as the Black community has lost more people, held more funerals, lost more potential as a community and as a culture, and grieves more because of murders by law enforcement today, yesterday, and two hundred years ago than any other group in the U.S. I hear what youre saying. Im White, and youre my friends. Youre saying were all related, this is a human loss because it is a Black loss. You realize that in the final analysis, our Whiteness wont protect us if the state wants to come down on us too. You want to stop the brutality and deaths because theyre craven, vile attacks on people. So you stand up. And thats the problem. I am not at the student protest today because Im not a student. In this instance, Ive been a student so I can reach back and remember how intrusive and distracting it was to have older people milling about, telling me what I should say and do as if I were too stupid to know how my future was affected by the wrong in front of me. Imagine how much more insulting it is to have someone who can never take part in the Black experience arguing with you in the middle of a fight for your life. In the middle of a protest, at the beginning of what might be the formation of a 21st century Afrikan movement—this is not the time to drag our points of view into that discussion and yell that were not being heard. Shut up. Or ask. Ask if theres a place for us in this. Ask if theres anything we can do. If there isnt, sit patiently on the sidelines. Wait for instructions and listen. Watch the budding of the Afrikan Movement, a new growth on a strong, ancient tree of perseverance, victories, and an unflinching determination to fight to the death. If that movement wins, then Afrikan people have resolved our concern about “all lives” in the face of state violence. Learn how Black people are sorting it out, resolving differences, planning, winning (and we have much to learn). Leave your ideologies and your strategies at home, and stay home if you cant. If the Black community wants strong leadership and youre a horizontalist, give it up—that conversation is a century old. If youre a pacifist and the Black community is shutting down or burning down businesses, stay away. The Black community knows the price of property destruction better than any of us. And an attack on a mall or a megastore is an attack on institutions that so many Black people dont have access to, or keep so many Black people in a perpetual poverty. Property damage is not a loss of control: its an attack on oppression. Walking on the freeway isnt occupying public space, it is a red alert to the city. Going to jail isnt a badge of participation, its choosing to enter an institution that will penalize you for the rest of your life for that decision. This is a life-and-death struggle, not an abstraction or a future possibility. When Black people march to the front of the police line and taunt those visored cyborgs, the police see Mike Brown, not you or me. Black peoples decades-long struggle to be treated as human beings has produced enough discussion of ideology, strategies, and tactics to fill a library. Consider that we have nothing to add thats worth interrupting the momentum. To do anything else--to impose your demands for inclusion or “correctness” so you can be a Good White Person or a Helpful White Person or a Part of This or a Greater Cause, or because your life is made up of being where the action is, or because This Is All Our Fight, or whatever your reason for wanting to be in the middle of the Black protests--is imposing our racial identity on people who are telling us clearly that they are not going to deal with us and everything else, at least not now. But if youre my friend, this is just a reminder. Our job now is to make sure White people behave ourselves.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 22:49:29 +0000