I definitely did not bring my best self to that argument and name-calling is low. This One Privileged White Guy (OPWG) was right on that front.
But when you, the OPWG, tell me you’re going to host a party, for the express purpose of telling people to wear whatever offensive costume they want, as a lesson in the fact that people “are just too sensitive these days”… yeah. I’m going to call your bluff. I’ll ask you what you’d do if someone in your circle explained why your appropriation of hairstyle, skin color or clothing is damaging, hurtful or hateful to them. And I’ll tell you that because I think you’re an intelligent guy, that I think you’d consider their points and take them to heart. And you can go ahead and insist that you would not listen.
Here’s the thing. Everyone in the room tried to silence me, the person arguing against this bloviating, die-hard “I’m-not-racist-but-everyone-is-just-being-oversensitive” OPWG, rather than jumping on the racism itself. (Hey, my friend, at one point you literally sat on me in an effort to get me to stop calling this OPWG out. 😀 )
I mean he literally said “they [BLM] are going about it the wrong way”… as if he has the solution to all the needs of black people in the movement and of course how did they never think of it before he came along to save them all. I mean seriously folks. He IS the problem… he’s a bigger problem than the Proud Boys for damn sure, cause at least they come out with tattoos on their necks, waving flags that identify them in an armed militia formation that we can battle openly.
I know that no white or passing person wants to deal with yet another thing right now. On top of pandemic and forest fires and melting ice caps and fucking murder hornets and life and death that just keep coming at you no matter what else is going on… I know the folks who can avoid it do, cause they just wanna be happy and maintain. But I, for one, am no longer having a good time. We have a president who stood up on national television and declared that a white supremist group should stand by for instructions [from him], and that the anti-fascists and folks on the left (ME in other words, my husband, my best friends and neighbors) are really the problem. And neither of the pasty ass, privileged entitled white men standing there on the stage did anything about it.
And neither did any of the pasty-assed privileged white folks in the room during the argument with OPWG. We have to be done (I am done) making excuses for that guy who’s just being a jackass because no one ever sits on him to shut him up. He’s the fucking problem.
Because no matter how decent a guy he is, he isn’t decent enough to actually just go read up on the policies and strategies of a movement being led by 3 brilliant black women and a slew of community organizers with years of experience fighting for their own damn freedom. And why not? Because it would never occur to him that their thoughts are worthy of his examination. He cannot conceive of a world in which a movement of black people could know more and know better than he does.
This is the insidious racism that we’re going to be battling, everyday, for the rest of our lives as Americans. And it isn’t going to be comfortable, and it isn’t going to be silent and non-confrontational. And I did it super imperfectly last night and I’m dedicating myself to learning how to do it better. But I’m not ceding the floor to that OPWG anymore.
PS. And at the end there, when OPWG yelled at me saying “You called me names! You called me an a–hole!” Can I remind you that the whole premise of this argument was that people are oversensitive (about you appropriating their sacred garments, their skin color, their language and names)… and you can’t handle name calling?!!? Stuff it dude. Stuff it.