EVERYTHING IS CHANGING AND NOTHING IS STILL

sinidentidades:

I won’t even try and dismiss the idea that some of what Tim Wise has said is really problematic, but that’s for another conversation. White people like Tim Wise are both important and dangerous. They’re important in the sense that white people won’t listen to PoCs when it comes to the concepts of whiteness and white privilege.

Of course, that says something even more sinister about how screwed up white privilege really is that it takes another white person to explain to white people what PoCs have been saying forever, but they are important to some extent. Their importance and relevance ends when they try and appropriate and misuse our real struggles as a means to making their voices the most important in talks about race or profiting from it.

This is dangerous because it creates the idea for pseudo-intellectual white folks to come in and say, “Hey, this is how I can help with race relations!” And some will do it well, but some will take it to a place where they feel they are the experts in talks about race.

It gets to a point where they are so deluded with the books they’ve read and talks they’ve heard that they start telling PoCs what’s racism and what isn’t. What’s important and what it isn’t. What they should be doing to overcome their own oppressions.

No, that is not your place. Your voice is not the most important. Your voice being the dominant voice is part of the reason we’re in the place that we’re in.

When a PoC tells you you’re out of line, you’re out of line. Take your seat and listen. That’s what a good ally should do, not talk over us like as if we need your white wisdom to enlighten us on our own struggles. 

They’re our struggles, not yours.