Facebook Publication Date: 5/14/2018 17:05

in rough form. Will edit it when I get home. But I thought it was important enough to hang here now.

So, Wipipo! How do you feel about your progress and praxis this last year and a half?

18 Months Later:

On the state of Collaborative Co-Conspirators and Progressive White Allyship In The Trump Era

Below is my response in a group where a white woman chose to make clear her clench and her unwillingness to do tangible, sacrificial work in service to her stated conviction of racial justice.

She was, justifiably, called out. By wipipo mostly.

But it did get me thinking about the white people that were so vocal in chastising her. What had they done in the last year-and-a-half?

It’s been a fairly long time. Ample time to learn the words, the lingo, the tone, all the things that make us look good in online spaces. But the question remains what have these allies, co-conspirators, comrade, Rider dies actually done?

The woman, whose unintentional Candor sparked this whole thing, is an easy bashz easily given side eye, and held up as a negative example.

But I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half working way more than people might think wise in spaces that should include the best of the best in terms of people who really want to do the work of racial justice and take it outside.

Most of these groups were responses to pantsuit Nation, with that dumpster fire of place where women of color have never been safe starting from its very inception.

But these new spaces that are meant to center on, valueb and honor women of color- how much better have they been doing?

More to the point how much better have the wipipo in them been doing?

No one is off the hook. The question still stands.

In this new era of trump how much better are y’all doing? I have seen more hostility and push back from so-called Progressive white people, people who swear they stand with us, then I had before Trump.

This is a conversation that needs to happen and needs to be talked about Right now, because we’re in the throes of midterms.

We are no farther along in making our public spaces, our legislatures, our places of business, the academy, our worship spaces safer and better for people of color than they were the day before Trump was elected.

We have spoken a lot of words. But as we have seen time and time again white people, particularly white people who swear they stand with us have, except for Online Optics declined to really do much of anything.

What will it take for us to really come into the world we want, or the world we say we want, and by ‘we’ I mean wipipo.

So the question is how have you changed these 18 months, how have you stayed still, how have you regressed or push backed or relapsed on the issue of racial Justice, and what do you commit to doing now in your personal, collective, and interior lives to actually start moving the ball forward in ways all of you swear you want to see.

Where is your clench, how how do you plan on pushing past it, and can you, will you, commit to putting it on turbo charged because the hour is short. So very very short.

Responses welcomed cross-posting here, in Lace on Race and on my Medium page.

I want to see how the conversation will go in these different spaces.

And I really want the conversation. Please honor me and my work by your thoughtful responses.

——-

All of the above is why my experience with PSN was both galvanizing and infuriating. And convicting.

By the time PSN had blown up like so much Jiffy Pop, I was convinced of a few things: that if we were gonna do better as a party (i am an intermittant reluctant Dem) and as a sisterhood, ww needed to learn to do better. Given that, it was clear that ww didn’t get the memo on this particular. There is a wide, wide gulf between how ww *think* they move in this world, in terms of action, authentic benelovence, nonviolence, faithfulness, resilience, and the like–and how they actually do.

It’s one reason that i was involved in as many racial justice groups as i have been, and the main reason i founded LoR. This lack of congruence delivers great violence to woc in general and black women in particular.

The fact that PSN women, and now other women who are involved in justice work however defined are the absolute best critical mass we have to work with is so demoralizing. The behavior I have seen over the last 18 months by women who say they stand with us is beyond disappointing. We can be angry at this woman who started this mess, but her unintentional candor was actually refreshing.

Wipipo, all y’all need to find your own clench, even as you decry this woman hers.

Hear this. Right now it falls to you, you who are better and more evolved than the unwashed in PSN. But we see such fragility here, such a lack of respect of and pushback on valid assertions, suggestions, and carefully curated and delivered observations and directives of women of color, and, again, black women, that I am not at all sure of our future efficacy in either on the ground, on the fly actions like this here in the market, or larger issues in policy and legislation. It has been 18 months now. Y’all should be doing so much better.

Crossposting an expanded version of this in Lace on Race and Medium. Want to see how the conversation plays out in each discrete environment.

None of you are wrong to drag this woman. But if you’re not looking at yourselves, it is woefully incomplete.

Do better by the people you say you stand with.

I would really appreciate the affirmation and courtesy of further and thoughtful discussion.

—-
And as always, please support independent black women voices by contributing to and becoming an active heart in the community of Lace on Race. Please share only from the Lace on Race page so attribution is assured and revisions are included.

paypal.me/mennolacie

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