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White women social justice activists: We’re on the same team
How to give up our treasured condescension to do good work
Reading notes: My intended audience is primarily straight, white, cis women but it may also apply to queer women. I’m speaking here of power dynamics and don’t believe it’s my place to speak to anyone but my peers.
Do we have the same beliefs? Let’s check:
I believe that demanding, manipulating, fighting, looting, and destroying property is a “punching up” strategy that can be morally employed by oppressed people.
I believe that tone policing people of colour is white supremacy. Telling people how to feel and how to respond about violence targeting them, about systemic oppressive inequality, is violent communication that ultimately seeks to maintain white supremacy by trying to limit the tools available to oppressed people to gain equality.
I believe it’s important to listen to people of colour when they share their experiences and to believe them. I believe they are the experts on what they need. And when it comes to dismantling power, they are truly the experts on tactics. We should not be telling them what works when talking to white people. We can’t possibly know what works because we will never be Black trying to get white people to listen…
