Maybe it’s because I’m white and selfish, but I don’t think I will ever understand how insisting on ideological purity is going to solve anything. To me it seems like a classic example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. It’s just like what happened in the last election.
It’s true that white people can be insensitive jerks who don’t listen to or take seriously the experiences of people who are different from them. But people don’t like to be silenced or told their opinions don’t matter. Not just white people…PEOPLE don’t like that. I realize there’s a little poetic justice going on because minorities have to put up with that kind of treatment all the time, but the truth is that it DOES drive people away. And you can say all day that they were never really your allies, but they were at least willing to try to help, even if they weren’t perfect about it. And when you drive someone away, they don’t disappear. They still talk. They still vote. They still work within their everyday sphere of influence.
Not everyone is going to live up to your high standards of what an ally should and shouldn’t do, or should and shouldn’t be. I am appalled that anyone still voted for Trump after some of his comments, but me thinking those people are reprehensible didn’t stop them from voting. Maybe if more of us had reached out and been empathetic to more of them, despite our opinions about them, we could have avoided getting Trump elected. Or maybe not. But we know that shaming them DIDN’T work. They didn’t go away when we called them deplorables or said we weren’t willing to talk to anyone who would excuse Trump’s racist, sexist, xenophobic, and downright sociopathic words and actions. They were rejected by us and clung all the more tightly to their reactionary demagogue.
It must be incredibly frustrating to always have white people, with a total lack of self-awareness, try to shout over you. And it’s true that if you telling them to shut up causes them to immediately turn away from participating in anti-racist movements, they were probably an asshole to begin with. But most people are assholes or at least deeply flawed, and even deeply flawed people can help. If we care about changing culture or changing the minds of the populace, we can’t say in the same breath that we don’t care about changing the minds of people who don’t live up to our expectations. Unfortunately, we have to accept that that means the assholes too.
My two cents as a white person to whom this article was not addressed, so take it or leave it as you will.
