jenlarsen:Black and brown bodies are being brutalized, degraded, and destroyed in my name, on my behalf as a white person and a white woman. The premeditated murder of 9 Black persons was an effort by a white man to start a race war. To take back a country he calls his-he calls mine. That he says belongs to white people.Black people are still being lynched by authority figures. White people are still in their defensive crouches, justifying the brutalization of black bodies with white supremacist logic.The dominant narrative says: Black people are a dangerous, horrifying They. White people are a noble, threatened, smug Us. It is 20 fucking 15, and if that is a world you can live in, I don't know what to say to you.You want to do something about a racist, serial-killing white supremacist structure that criminalizes and destroys Black lives? Here. You've heard this all before. Because it's important. This is the little I know. I'm still learning. I'm still an idiot, and still make stupid mistakes, and all the outrage and sorrow in the world is not going to make me The World's Best White Ally but here are some of the few things I know about and try. Here is a start.Listen to people of color. Hear their experiences. Don't tell them how to feel. Don't explain how you're different. Don't clarify for them what you think actually happened that they didn't see because they're not objective. Don't justify the behavior they encounter.Be the unpopular, humorless person who doesn't let racist remarks go by. Be the awkward, socially uncouth person who says stop. Be the person who says, that's not funny. That's a shitty thing to say. That's a racist thing to say. Shut down the appropriation of black voices. A white person earnestly/smugly/stupidly says, "well, ALL lives matter," and you shout NO.Stop validating. Don't say, "well of course all lives matter, but-" We're done with apologizing for hurting white feelings, because here, now, white feelings do not matter. Reject the thug narrative. Vocally.Reject the lie that a "good kid" is an exception. Vocally.Reject the riot narrative. A protest fueled by righteous anger is not a riot. Fight back against the superior, self-righteous admonition that violence never solved anything. Rage when Martin Luther King Jr. is used to condemn black rage with intellectually lazy selective misquoting and misappropriation. "A riot," King said, "is the language of the unheard."Find Black voices. Read and watch and look and listen and buy and support unequivocally. Reject the overwhelmingly white narrative of this country's mass media and find new voices, other perspectives. Lift up Black voices by backing them, championing them, investing in them.I'm tired and sick and sad and white and I have the power to push back and keep pushing back and you do too, because you don't want to live in a world where murder and violence and hate grows and flowers in your name, for you, for your privilege. Because Black lives matter.Still relevant.
