This is to you lurkers. You’re here to learn. You think there’s good stuff. But engaging per the Guidelines is just not for you. It’s too scary, it’s too hard, you’re not ready, you’re too busy, or maybe you just straight up don’t wanna. You know enough. You do enough. Reading is enough. You’re getting all you need. Well, let me tell you, you may be getting all you care about, but whether it’s all you need is another matter, and all that is vital for you to reduce and mitigate the harm perpetuated upon Black and brown people, perpetrated by white people like me, and like you… if all you’re doing here is lurking, you are nowhere close to getting that.

I’m here to help us count the ways.

For a while, Lace took to Twitter, and while it hasn’t been a big part of our online presence since the first flurry, we’re looking into ways to leverage new tools for better outreach, and Twitter might just be one of them. I’m personally chagrined, because I both intensely dislike, and don’t at all get, Twitter. I imagine the two are related. But, hey, I’m an admin, and if this space makes a foray into the Twitterverse, I need to keep up! So over the course of a week or so, back during the TCL mishegoss, Lace, myself, and a couple of other walkers here encountered someone on Twitter on a thread about TCL’s new funding model. You know. The one involving “sustaining” that they put out, after weeks of lurking, perhaps it’s fair to even say snooping, around Lace on Race, where we’ve discussed having sustainer-focused financial engagement for over a year. It’s a common enough term of the art, but isn’t it interesting that, only after bashing Lace as a “cult leader” and various folks telling us how deluded we are, TCL would say, “We need everyone who finds value in The Christian Left to step forward and become a sustainer. Here’s how…”

So Lace brought it up, as a newly minted Tweeter, quoting that TCL Tweet and, saying, “This language of Sustainers is my own. Absolutely appropriated from Lace on Race. Heinous, this: looting a funding model they vilified me for, calling me an opportunistic cult leader. But our funding model is worth stealing. Got it.”

Now, I know you’ve been lurking, so maybe you’ve missed a bit. The less you engage, the less Facebook pushes to your feed, so if you’re not coming to the page intentionally, you’re definitely missing large chunks. But this is something we’ve been talking about here, and you’ll find it with some poking around. There is an awful lot to this TCL story. Too much to go into now. So, back to Twitter. Well, someone who calls themselves “Truth to Power” piped up on Lace’s post. Screenshots of the full conversations are posted down below, but here I’m going to try to present the key parts of the conversation AS a conversation.

So Truth to Power responded, “hey there, lace! Can you please clarify what you mean about the language of sustainers being your own? A Google search verified it as a pretty common fundraising tool name.”

“Well…” you might be saying, “that… seems like a fair question?” I’m going to stop you right there. Here’s where the flexes of whiteness start coming into it. Lace has talked about where particular individuals have flexed on her, but what I need y’all to understand up front is that flexes of whiteness aren’t behaviors confined to particular bad actors, who may or may not where robes and carry torches. All of us flex. Flexes are a power move rooted in the power over that we white people carry innately as part of a society structured around white supremacy. These flexes are patterns with us. Charles Toy exhibited the same flexes as Jim Golden when they first entered Lace on Race. They employed different tones, but used the exact same flex upon entry.

But back to Truth to Power’s first flex. We’ll call it Flex #1: We twist ourselves six ways from Sunday to avoid just BELIEVING BLACK PEOPLE. Every single one of us wants our “fair question” to be perfectly framed in an objectively rational vacuum. We want unimpeachable evidence, and even then, we want to see benefit of the doubt extended. Why isn’t this a fair question from an individual who should be assumed to be an innocent actor until proven guilty? Because it’s not fair, it’s not isolated, and it’s never innocent.

How can I possibly know? Look, in bringing up the question, Truth to Power is making the assumption that Lace HAS SOMEHOW NOT NOTICED that the term she uses, at this stage of her decades of activism, is common in fundraising circles. The question as framed presupposes SOME failing on Lace’s part. Either she lacks honesty, or she lacks pretty basic knowledge, available on Google. This question is not fair. It shows a very fundamental inclination to disbelieve Black people, and to take it to my next point, that’s not isolated. This is why I say flexes of our power are patterns, not isolated incidents. How many times have you heard a story told by a Black person about racism, exploitation, or appropriation they have experienced, and you try to explain it away? That’s Flex #1. I know that I have done it. I have tried to explain away my OWN racism. I feel certain that many of you have done it, too, and many of you have seen it done, and many of you have felt the temptation to it. And maybe you feel like your particular insight is particularly insightful, and if your Black friend would just believe you on this, they would feel better about what has happened to them. 

But would they? Because haven’t you just replaced feeling like a target of racism to feeling like a paranoiac? How is that… better? Maybe what would make them feel better would be you believing them, without question. What trying to convince them it isn’t racism does is make YOU and ME feel better. If those honest questions aren’t racist, then neither are we for thinking they have merit. If we can still be innocently in the dark about the ways things are racist, then we can still be forgiven for the ways we are racist, because we just didn’t know, and we never meant it. But shouldn’t we know by now? Shouldn’t we know at least enough to BELIEVE BLACK PEOPLE? 

This is what I mean by saying this question was not fair, not isolated, and not innocent. This is what I mean by being part of a pattern. Because every Black person who dares to speak about the racism they experience has a hundred or so of us dismissing that conclusion, either to ourselves, or to their face. Black people get dismissed on the daily. They know it when it’s happening. We are not unique individual actors in this. This is Flex #1.

Lace explained, “To lessen and mitigate the harm [endured] by black and brown people perpetuated by white people. Most emphatically including the Christian left. But please by all means continue to enable them. I don’t know if you don’t get the distinction, or if you get the distinction and are dismissing it, or if you just wanted to foment a fake sense of outrage and sealioning. Or it’s just okay with you, this appropriation of intellectual Capital by white people. So yes, I do have a problem white supremacist men using a model honed by a black woman who they have vilified and dehumanized. I know that you feel like you’re creating some sort of a gotcha moment. You aren’t. No I did not invent the word sustainer, but I did create pretty much the exact same funding model, except for the fact that they stripped the relational from it that they are touting.”

Truth to Power responded, “I certainly don’t feel that way. I knew the word from a fundraising professional background, so I asked for clarification.”

Here we hit Flex #2: we white people will always flex professionally. We will credential ourselves. We will cite our authority. But… I hear you asking… if we’re going to ask a question within a specific field, shouldn’t we, like, be clear if we have knowledge, and have a right to question what we’re told? Ahhhh, so we’ll look at two things. First, a close look at how Truth to Power is fitting into Flex #2, and then, how we are in defining what gives us our “right” to question.

“I knew that word from a fundraising professional background…” notice the shift? It’s gone from, hey lace, I looked this up on Google to I have a fundraising background. And more. I have a fundraising professional background. Not only am I knowledgeable in this field too, this says, but I’ve been PAID to be knowledgeable about it, is the implication. And that speaks volumes to what exactly white people, as a whole, value, and see as confirming authority, the “right” to question. Experience, okay, yes, but also… MONEY. We know, intellectually, that many people are paid well to do jobs they’re bad at (hello Peter Principle), and that many incredibly skilled people don’t get paid much if anything for their craft (like most construction workers and farm laborers). 

In fact, let’s call that Flex #3: we white people value people and objects in direct proportion to how much money they’re “worth”. And here’s another particular point for you lurkers to ponder. Maybe you *do*agree with TCL in some regards. Maybe you *do* think Lace’s asks are kind of crass, and that you can get plenty out of Lace on Race for free, so why should you pay, any more than you should comment? Y’all. There are so many reasons Lace deserves to be compensated for the immense quantity and quality of work she does here for your benefit. But skipping that, I’m going to point right to Flex #3. Part of why you are lurking, and not fully utilizing and valuing this space… is because you don’t have to pay for it. This is why we call it “financial engagement” and not “donations” or “fundraising”. Because putting your skin in the game ups your game. Dramatically. And since your literal skin is not a risk for you, and since Flex #3 is absolutely a thing, the skin you put in this game is your money. 

Putting your money into this community gives you a stake in this community, and makes you a more productive and therefore a more beneficial member of this community. And for all you think you may be getting out of this community, you will only get more out of it if you put more into it. Right now, if you aren’t engaging with your entire self, your thoughts, your growth, your praxis, and your money, you are absolutely cheating yourself, in addition to, inarguably, short-changing Lace and neglecting our community partners. The worst part is, cheating yourself of true growth toward reducing and mitigating the harm to Black and brown people caused by white people like you and me… doesn’t just hurt you.

Lace went on: “If you work for fundraising as a professional then you absolutely should have understood what I was saying. You’re going to Webster’s was indeed disingenuous and snarky. You need to own your words.”

Truth to Power: “I do own my words. I didn’t see how the TCL was doing as you said if it is a common model. I was hoping clarification would help me.”

Lace continued, “The fun part about using a model common name notwithstanding, that I use is that I have been vilified for that very used by the Christian left and their agents. In some incredibly shocking and unchristian-like term. Being called a loser and a grifter. Here’s where it turns into yet more appropriation, like the face mask, like doctor barbers weekly sermons that they have yet to definitively say that rev Dr Barber endorses their using. I hope I’ve answered your disingenuous query. Have you anything else?”

There were a few additional tweets in this conversation, but Lace also retweeted Truth to Power’s initial question, captioning it, “Disingenuous sealioning. Tastes like chicken.” This I, Laura, retweeted (yes, Twitter EXHAUSTS me, I’m sorry if this is a bit disjointed), and I captioned it, “Context matters so much. It doesn’t appear that @TheChristianLft promoted their fundraising using sustainer language… until AFTER they watched @laceonrace videos, where we’ve been sustaining for over a year. For which they mocked us. And now…”

Truth to Power responded to me, “It’s interesting that you say context matters. I definitely agree. I asked Lace to clarify one of her points, and I was accused disingenuous sealioning?” [sic]

Welcome, friends, to Flex #4: turning to white people for reinforcement or validation. Now, probably Truth to Power could guess I wasn’t going to be sympathetic. And it was also probably a gotcha laid out for me. But Truth to Power frames what I say as interesting, and definitely agrees. I get their spin, that they asked to clarify one point, and was accused. This framing isn’t dishonest, but to me it seems subtly spun, and reveals none of the flex they inflicted on Lace, and all of the victimhood of being “accused.” I’ll get to that more in a bit.

Laura responds: “Yup. Have I clarified it enough for you now that I’ve provided the context? [Were] you curious, or were you looking for a gotcha? If the first, now you know. If the second… disingenuous sealioning seems fair. So now, what will you do with what you’ve learned? Are you going to be mad at Lace for not expending the effort to educate you on a story you could have dug into yourself if you were really interested?”

Truth to Power: “I can see how it may seem like they learned about it from LOR, but it doesn’t seem like the most likely option given its commonality. I didn’t expect an education, just some clarification. I didn’t learn a ton from asking my question to be honest. Lace seemed to say they were missing the crucial part that she maintains…so that would make it more like most sustainer models in my view.”

Owwww, did you strain something pulling that flex, Truth to Power? Can we call this Flex #5: devaluing what we learn from Black people? There’s still some Flex #2 of being the authority going on, and there’s a LOT of Flex #1, absolute disbelief of Lace’s experience of appropriation as a Black woman. And now, Truth to Power could actually have received some education, but didn’t expect it, didn’t want it, and didn’t learn a ton. And… maybe that’s some of you lurkers, too. Maybe you don’t really expect to learn much, so you don’t try. Maybe sometime, you think, you’ll pop out and ask a question “for clarification”. And if you don’t hear what you want or expect, you’ll shrug, draw back, disengage, and say it’s Lace or your fellow walkers who don’t have much to teach you, rather than admitting that you didn’t really expect to learn, and so you didn’t take away the learning you could have. This is why Robin DiAngelo pulls in five figures for a speaking engagement, and Jim and Kate work in universities and teach racial equity or ethnic studies, or similar topics for more money than their BIPOC counterparts. This is why Lace and other Black leaders and thinkers… don’t. Because when it comes from a Black or brown person, it is worth less to us as white people. Period.

Truth to Power went on: “And no, I won’t be mad. Just a little sad that negative intent is assumed with a question asking for clarification about her meaning within the context of my knowledge on one particular point.” 

Laura: “I hear you. In a sea of bad actors, your intentions weren’t clear enough to distinguish you from them. That can sting. Will you take it to heart and do better in future, or will you feel justified in blaming the person trying to swim instead of the waves they’re struggling in?”

Truth to Power: “I hear what you are saying. I just try to approach most things with an intention towards understanding. I know you are offering a choice here, but inferences about intention should be carefully considered before acted upon.”

BAM. Flex #6: we white people want desperately for our intentions to excuse our impact. I’m sure you saw this coming back when Lace made it overt the way Truth to Power’s comment landed on her. And that was skated right over. Here again Truth to Power presents to me, presumably a fellow white person (my photo was plain, theirs was blank), how they feel that their intention is what deserves careful consideration. More careful consideration than they gave to their impact, popping in with a question for “clarification” that was really disagreement, rather than belief seeking education.

That! That right there. Let’s call that Flex #7: we white people put on masks. Little by little Truth to Power clarified that they had fundraising experience and disputed Lace’s naming what TCL did appropriation. But that’s not what they led with. So disingenuous fits. And we all do it. We all seek plausible deniability of our potential racism, or our known racism. We mask it and ourselves. We mask, maybe, by lurking on Lace on Race, but never showing ourselves, and never talking about it with our friends or family. We expect privacy in our anti-racism work, the same way some TCL folks seemed to, when they sent direct messages to Lace filled with abuse, then became angry when she made their face plain on her page. Because we’re white, we can hide that racism bothers us, or at least, the racism of others bothers us. Black people can’t hide from the racism that bothers them, and can’t hide it from themselves like we can.

Lace picked the conversation back up with a very key question: “Here is a query: why are you more concerned about a term that activated and offended you, than you are about lessening and mitigating harm endured by black and brown people, perpetuated by white people?”

Truth to Power: “I was neither activated nor offended. I knew the term. I had a question.”

Okay, I personally feel that the first sentence is more Flex #7 masking. Just as we white people will deny meaning to anger or rile with our “honest questions” that aren’t, we will absolutely mask when we are activated as a way to minimize the distress our racism may cause us, or the guilt we feel when we’re called on it, which often expresses itself as anger or upset or offence of some sort. But Lace pulls out the nugget here. Truth to Power spent a lot more time disputing that they were seeking anything but clarification, and arguing against the “accusation” of disingenuous sealioning, all the while showing they were being disingenuous, and, by having popped up into the ongoing story to demand clarification on one point, embodying the definition of sealioning. I’m going to talk here about Flex #8: we white people absolutely go to offending from the victim position as a mode of our defense against Black people who upset us, i.e., make us see ourselves without our masks.

Truth to Power, not receiving the reception they expected, but being immediately challenged on their motives for asking, and being met with skepticism that they truly didn’t understand what was being said, never deigned to acknowledge any validity in Lace feeling she had been appropriated from, chose to disbelieve the Black woman talking directly to them, and spent more time complaining at the way they had been treated, even asking me if *I* thought Lace’s characterization was fair, calling Lace’s responses an accusation, even comparing it to a teacher telling off a student for raising their hand and asking a question, putting Lace in the position of authority as teacher even after undermining her fundraising expertise with the flex of being a “professional”.

I’ll tell you a little more that may clear something up. The account for “Truth to Power” as of this morning, had been created in September, had 0 tweets, only replies to Lace and other walkers as part of this conversation, 0 followers, and was following 0 people. There was no profile picture, only the default humanoid emblem. This account was created to engage in this conversation. And the name chosen was “Truth to Power”. 

They cited an episode of the West Wing, said that they had watched it and been motivated to ask the question. Others can maybe fill in more of the story behind that allusion. But, to me, selecting this name, for this interaction, aligns with positioning Lace as a teacher. Lace has Power, and this person is going to bravely speak truth to them. Lace makes this overt: “Regardless of where you locate yourself on the racial or ethnic Spectrum. You are having a conversation with a black woman. And in this Society, you will always have more Social Power and societal Capital than I have.” I see the selection of name, the positioning of Lace as the one in power, and not truth, as a preemptive supposition that this person will end up in a victim position for speaking truth, and thus sees accusation and claims that victim position, even while flexing as an authority and holding the greater social power. They went in already positioning themselves to use Flex #8, primed to offend from the victim position.

You’ll be able to tell from the full screen shots, but I’ve been skipping some, and a few things may be out of order. Still figuring out Twitter. But I want to go back to another brief but telling exchange. 

Lace: “Another genuine question. If you consider what Laura was saying to you about the company that you seemed to keep, can you understand why perhaps I had Shields up? Unless you make a proactive statement that you are not in that cohort, it’s a reasonable assumption that you are.”

Truth to Power: “I can see why you may want to assume my company, but if you’d confirmed, I could have helped. I do understand why your shields are up. The thing is you are operating publicly which is a noble pursuit, but you already know that…”

This is what I want to present as Flex #9: we white people expect Black people, especially black women, to be tough, “strong” and just take our abuse. Lace could have asked about intentions first, so it’s her fault things landed how they did, and she’s the one who lives life out loud, which, as we’ve seen, Truth to Power does not have the courage for. So it is her responsibility, since she’s operating in public, to just take what I have to give, even though I could always have held my volley. I don’t have to be a secondary trauma. I can choose to be a corrective experience. But all too often, I don’t choose anything deliberately, and just assume that whatever trauma I knowingly or unknowingly cause will be absorbed. I will not have to answer it. I can go on my way. I’m white.

At one point, Lace says, straight out, “If this is a genuine query, and you really want to know about why appropriation and Erasure it’s such a huge part of the white white supremacy place out with black people both on an individual and Collective level I am happy to have this conversation.”

Truth to Power responded, “See, I’d give it a go, but you have repeatedly doubted my sincerity which makes it pretty inauthentic for me. You have no reason to trust me or anything, but I just don’t find that kind. My question was very specific to one point you were making. I get the rest overall.”

By now, you can see a whole interweaving of flexes here, but I want to pull out Flex #10: we white people want to end that conversation about racism on our terms. Truth to Power did this multiple times. They asked their one small specific question (sealioning it into the midst of an ongoing story as we’ve seen), and they were answered and done. They had nothing of themselves authentic to give to the discussion. They only wanted one answer, one which they already dismissed even in the asking of the question, and they were done. They even played the most Flex #10 dismissive card, and thanked Lace for responding.

We need to talk for a minute, lurkers, and all walkers. “Isn’t it polite to say ‘Thank you’?” Well… is it? Is it polite when you say it in place of, “Okay, I’m done with this conversation. Stop talking to me now”? Because believe me, we absolutely say it to end a conversation, without being overt and saying we want to end the conversation. It’s part of our white people “nice” that isn’t actually “kind”. And needing time to absorb, I get it. I really do. Needing time to get over being activated, to hold my own hand and manage the slosh in my bucket, all of that can take time. One of the reasons we’re in this space, though, is to practice so it takes less time, becomes reflexive, and we won’t build those muscles if we don’t push them. This is why Lace says we need to proceed with “all deliberate speed”. This is why the internal work is the work, but it needs to be pushed out of our heads and into the real world, so it can be tested for its durability. This is why lurking will never build you those muscles. This is why more than 75% of the people who end a session of walking with Lace or others of us with “thank you, I’ll sit with that and come back” never actually do come back. Their thank you means “good bye, I’m out.” And that is disingenuous, not polite.

I’ve addressed this letter to the lurkers but these flexes are important for all of us here to recognize. We are none of exempt from falling into our habitual use of them without care. And, maybe I hear you say, but at least you’re here at Lace on Race. Surely you do know better, just by being here. Hmmm…

Another tidbit from Truth to Power. It came out earlier in the conversation, but I buried the lead a bit. Truth to Power let us know, “You haven’t asked me how I got here. So, I will volunteer it. I have been a lurker following LOR for over a year. I knew the story. I had a question.”

Lurkers, seldom-engagers, everyone who gives themselves a pass on engaging, or wants a carveout because it’s hard, they’re busy, they have disabilities, take a good long look. I believe you’re at Lace on Race to learn, or you’d never have liked or followed. But how much, or should I say, how little will you actually learn by lurking. This person, who has been at Lace on Race for over a year, and says, “I know you don’t appreciate lurking. I’d say sorry, but it wouldn’t change my behavior,” how much, or how VERY LITTLE have they learned? Flex #11: we white people demand our carveouts.

Now, to be perfectly blunt, Truth to Power wasn’t asking for a carveout. Truth to power gave our space the middle finger, hung around on the fringes for about a year doing so, and cared nothing about the white supremacy that shows. I want to believe that’s anomalous, but all the same, when we don’t do the work and engage per our Community Guidelines, we’re making our own carveouts. And when we make it overt, and make sure to tell Lace that we’ve made a carveout for our individual selves, we are performing Flex #11 at her. We white people want our personal excuses to excuse us. And we absolutely want Lace to absolve us, and we for sure flex for those carveouts and expect her absolution.

We also desperately want to think we don’t have to do the work to be good at the work. Truth to Power was here with us for a year. They didn’t make any headway against performing every flex of whiteness I can think of, though I’m sure Lace has more she’s detected through a lifetime of navigating whiteness with an eye to her safety as a Black woman. All of these flexes have been discussed in one form or another either in posts spanning the past year, or in the pinned posts. There is no excuse for not knowing them all, and being able to avoid them all. But if all you do is read a post and move on, are you really learning from it? If you don’t reflect, and recount your reflections and read and engage with the reflections of others, how much will you retain?

What does it matter, though? It’s not like there’s a test. You aren’t going to get any school of life credit from this that you can leverage into a better GPA and a better degree and better pay. No one’s keeping score, are they? No. There’s no test you’ll be graded on. There is only our North Star of lessening and mitigating the harm done to Black and brown people by white people… BY US. And that is more absolutely critical to our life on this planet, in this country, founded on and steeped in white supremacy, more crucial to our fundamental decency as human beings born into white skin, than any test you will ever take.

Screenshots of the quote exchange follow: