This ain’t a referendum on whether individual white people can care about Black life. And I’m not saying white people can’t fight racism. History is full of effective examples of radical white folks working for racial justice. I am simply examining a recurring political urge that some white progressive have to be cast as the natural moral center of every struggle, as the default audience and the implied co-protagonists of Black resistance, or as proof of one’s own moral arrival. I’m talking about the desire not just to oppose injustice, but to be seen opposing it in a way that feels redemptive, cinematic, and low-cost.
Assuming you’re white, my question for you would be: why would someone who isn’t black want to not just support them, but to join them? Why isn’t it it enough to fight racial inequality in literally any other way?
If you have a problem with the statement “it’s not for you”, then maybe some self-examination is in order. But whether or not you like it…it’s not for you.
I’m white. It’s not for me. I’m OK with that. There are many ways I can fight inequality, and even support the New Black Panthers. But I don’t have to join them to do that.
That’s fair, although this paragraph buried at the bottom of the post felt more like a disclaimer than anything. Yes, I’m white, and I have never wondered if I should join the Black Panthers and I have no issue with the fact that it’s not a space for me. I clicked on the post because I was interested in hearing a well-articulated explanation of why it is important to that organization to be, for lack of a better word, discriminatory in it’s membership as well as what people who find the concept of armed protest appealing can do instead. And instead of getting either of those things, 90% of the article was “lol, white people and their lattes, am I right?”
Assuming you’re white, my question for you would be: why would someone who isn’t black want to not just support them, but to join them? Why isn’t it it enough to fight racial inequality in literally any other way?
If you have a problem with the statement “it’s not for you”, then maybe some self-examination is in order. But whether or not you like it…it’s not for you.
I’m white. It’s not for me. I’m OK with that. There are many ways I can fight inequality, and even support the New Black Panthers. But I don’t have to join them to do that.
That’s fair, although this paragraph buried at the bottom of the post felt more like a disclaimer than anything. Yes, I’m white, and I have never wondered if I should join the Black Panthers and I have no issue with the fact that it’s not a space for me. I clicked on the post because I was interested in hearing a well-articulated explanation of why it is important to that organization to be, for lack of a better word, discriminatory in it’s membership as well as what people who find the concept of armed protest appealing can do instead. And instead of getting either of those things, 90% of the article was “lol, white people and their lattes, am I right?”