The Undercover Introvert

Sexism 101: Internalized Misogyny

by 1 Comment

In case y’all haven’t noticed, we live in a deeply sexist country. I don’t think I really understood the true depths of that sexism until 2016. I knew the country’s founding documents — you know, the ones talking about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? — had been written solely to benefit rich, land owning white men. If we look back at the Cliff’s Notes version of our history, black, brown, indigenous, and female folks have had to fight tooth, nail, and whatever else to gain the same access to freedom, education, the ballot box, property, etc. that said men received by virtue of their being born rich and white. These fights are still going on today.

But, I guess what I’m saying is, though I knew we had a long way to go where matters of racism were concerned, I thought we’d gotten a whole lot further along the road to enlightenment where issues of sexism were concerned. I mean, there are lots of white women running around, right? And they benefit from systemic white supremacy the same way white men do, right? Wrong. Their access to power runs through the white men standing next to them. They don’t own it. They only borrow it, which means that access is precarious at best and can be torn away at any moment.

I digress.

Back to the 2016 election. Actually, let’s take it back a little further to the 2008 election. I supported Hillary Clinton from the beginning in that primary. I just figured there was no way in hell this country was ready for a black president. But an accomplished white woman? Now, that was doable. Also, I really thought someone would assassinate Barack Obama, and that feeling never dissipated after he won the primary and eventually the presidency. It only intensified. That was something about which I’m glad to have been proven wrong.

So, naturally, when HRC ran again in 2016, I was a supporter. We had our first black president, which I hadn’t thought even remotely possible, and I therefore thought getting our first female president would be a BREEZE (next step, a black female president!). And when I saw the asshole that ended up being her Republican opponent, I really thought we were in for some smooth sailing. Remind me never to get into the prediction business…

Everything that could go wrong in that race went wrong, but the sustained and scathing media scrutiny of HRC surprised me in a way that it just couldn’t when it happened again during the current election cycle, this time focused on the many women running for the highest office in the land of the free. Because I saw the process clearly for what it was: this country’s collective refusal to accept a woman daring to rise to the highest level, the level reserved for men. That’s what this electability argument is all about, and you’ll hear it trumpeted from the rooftops by men and women.

Madeleine Albright once famously said that there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. That hell is happening now. We’re living in it. We were born and raised here. Many of us just didn’t realize the full extent of the shitty landscape until after 2016. I’ve been a proponent of burning down the patriarchy since I understood what it was, but the fact that women might be its most loyal foot soldiers never quite hit home the way it did during that election. I can call it out now because I possess the ability to see it clearly for what it is. But when I watch other women jumping to do the work of the patriarchy and tear down another woman before she rises too high, it still saddens me.

Ladies, we’ve got to talk about internalized misogyny, and why it’s one helluva drug.

It’s bad enough when guys limit us because of our gender, but it’s doubly fucked up when another woman does it. But this happens all the time. Why?

Think of it like hazing. It’s absolute, unmitigated hell to get through, and you’d think, given your experience, you’d never want to pay that forward to anyone else. But you do, and with glee (just an FYI here: I’ve never been hazed, nor have I hazed anyone else; fuck that shit). Internalized misogyny works the same way, except the hazing never ends, even once we start paying it forward to other women. And remember what I said about white women and their proximity to white male power? Well, if you don’t tow the patriarchal line, you might lose some of that power. And that’d be like being forced to sit next to the lavatory in Coach after traveling your whole life in the cushy comfort of Business Class (First Class is still reserved for white dudes only, ladies, sorry). The horror.

Don’t get it twisted. Internalized misogyny isn’t just for white women. It may be a garment that fits them the best, but we have women of color out here wearing it too. It doesn’t quite fit the same way, but we can make it work. And it’s not really surprising. The foundations of this country aren’t just racist. They’re sexist too, and that means we’ve all grown up in an environment where women were judged to be inferior. This omnipresent misogyny infects us, and we eat it up, eventually learning to turn it against each other. The patriarchy hides. It protects itself. And its greatest trick is convincing women that we can’t support one another. It makes us believe that there’s only space for one woman at a time in a position of power, though not the top position. It makes us think that the only road to success runs through other women, that we have to tear each other apart and step on each other’s backs to get to the next level. Success is being the badass exception that proves the rule about female inferiority. Whose rule? The patriarchy’s, silly. It sets the music, and we dance.

But what if we’re tired of dancing? What do we do about it? How can we change the toxicity of our culture? The way we were raised? How we learned to treat other women and girls?

Step one: admit that we have a problem.

Step two: commit to doing something to solve it.

That means policing your behavior. That means challenging those around you. That means calling out misogyny wherever we see it, especially in ourselves and other women. If we can’t be on our own side, how in the hell are we going to deal with any of this mess? This isn’t a quick fix, ladies. But this shitshow didn’t come together overnight, which means it’s not going to be dismantled overnight either. This kind of massive shift in our collective behavior means we have to get used to being uncomfortable. It just so happens that discomfort is the condition for change. And, goddamn, we’re already uncomfortable enough with the patriarchy’s bootheel on our necks. Might as well go for it.

Image Source

Angry Women Get Sh*t Done

by Leave a Comment

Immediately after the 2016 election came to an end and the results were clear, I dressed in all black and began mourning the country I wanted America to be. This wasn’t necessarily the country it was, but the idea of it as a shining beacon in the slowly receding darkness of its own reality. My already flagging hope for the future had taken what I worried was a mortal blow, leaving me stumbling through the next few days as I nursed what felt like a repeated sucker punch to the stomach. But after a few days, that deep sadness morphed into something different.

I became enraged.

I wanted to scream, to burn shit to the ground, to roam the streets bellowing my refusal to accept the country as it was. And that fiery anger led me to do something I never thought I’d do: I got political. I became an active member of my local Democratic Party and joined every other progressive group I could find. That didn’t feel like enough, so I started a grassroots organization with a few other pissed off women that also wanted to get shit done. Instead of howling into the void, we figured out how to make change happen in our community. We built coalitions of other pissed off people, mostly women, and held our elected representatives accountable. When that didn’t work (I’m from a ruby red district in the Sunshine State), we rolled up our sleeves and worked to get local candidates elected. When the 2018 midterm cycle began, I threw myself into working for a gubernatorial candidate and hit the ground running. I’m still running today, and I’m still livid. I haven’t stopped being furious since a few days after November 8th, 2016.

Now, let’s cut back to the present day.

In a recent primary debate, a certain female candidate eviscerated one of her male opponents so completely, I was waiting for someone to hiss FINISH HIM. She then proceeded to carpet bomb the rest of the participants with devastating arguments and critiques while simultaneously making an ironclad case for her own electability. In short, there were a lot of things she came to do on the debate stage that night, and playing wasn’t one of them.

But after that performance, in pure this is why we can’t have nice things fashion, there was quite a bit of buzz that essentially centered on how angry this female candidate seemed, and how that was unfortunate, because this was a contest of ideas and likeability, and no one likes an angry woman. The immediate application of this annoying double standard especially rankled me, considering two of the male candidates spend the better part of their debate performances yelling at the audience, and one of them appears perpetually enraged, as though an entire coterie of grandchildren just ran through his precious flower beds after being repeatedly warned to stay the hell away from them.

Here’s the larger question in all this: why is male anger seen as a sign of righteousness and female anger is seen as a sign of instability?

We’re living in a political climate that’s akin to an endless dumpster fire that just keeps getting hotter and more destructive by the minute. We don’t have time to play nice. I want my presidential candidate to be angry. I want the person to be able to summon the flames of hell if need be, and focus them directly on the problem. This isn’t debate club, y’all. This is a fight for what the soul of our nation could become. It’s a fight for our shared future. Will we continue down this path of destruction and widespread inequality, or will we start to veer in more constructive, equitable, and sustainable directions? We have a man sitting in the White House (or gallivanting about the golf course, more like it) that would use the Constitution to wipe his ass if we let him. He’s damned near doing it now, and his cronies are more than happy to ask how high before he even thinks to demand they jump. This isn’t a drill, folks. It’s a five alarm fire. We need a fighter. We need someone enraged by the status quo and committed to do whatever’s necessary to change it.

The criticisms of that debate performance stem from society’s penchant for only allowing women to operate in one of two speeds, and they just happen to reside at the opposite end of the spectrum: serene and refreshing as a southern breeze or batshit crazy, hysterical, irrational. If a woman shows even the slightest hint of anger, that automatically labels her unfit for certain high level positions for which society agrees men are just better suited. And if she remains sugar and spice and everything nice, well, she’s too soft for those positions anyway, isn’t she? Just leave it to the men, sweetie.

This double standard is amplified to nearly insupportable levels if you’re black or another woman of color. God forbid any woman be angry, no matter the situation, but if she also happens to be a person of color, she’d better learn to balance on eggshells while keeping her emotions locked the fuck down or face swift repercussions.

As is my custom when faced with the worst American society has to offer, I’m calling B.S. on all of this. I categorically reject the implied premise of your argument that this female presidential candidate is unfit because she unleashed her righteous anger on several of her opponents.

This isn’t a tea party. It’s a race to see who is best equipped to do what’s arguably the most important job in the world. And, anyway, world history is basically the story of pissed off men conducting their conquests and wars while women mostly looked on from the sidelines, smiling sweetly as they lay the table for a home cooked dinner. It’s about damned time we have some women take center stage for a change, and if that means slicing through a number of less qualified men to get there, I’m here for it.

I don’t care who you are, what you believe, or who you’re supporting. If you can look at what’s going on in this country and not feel a deep seated, unquenchable rage, then you must not be paying attention. And if you’re still clinging to outdated gender norms, that shit is on you. Women are pissed. We’re running for office. We’re winning. Get over it or get the hell out of the way.

Image Source

The Myth of Electability

by 2 Comments

Now that we’re officially in the 2020 Presidential Election year, we should probably take a moment to seriously reflect on an issue that hasn’t so much been lingering on the periphery, as standing in the middle of the room, sucking up all the air and shrieking like the squeaky, troublemaking wheel it is.

Electability.

Since the end of the 2018 Midterm Election cycle, we’ve been beaten over the head with this blunt object of a word by every political pundit, both amateur and professional. We’ve had to watch as they frantically and repeatedly consider the viability of every black, Hispanic, and female candidate that bought a ticket to ride the nonstop crazy train that is the Democratic Presidential Primary. This hysteria quickly bled from TV screens and print media to the streets, where everyday voters continued the circular conversation, becoming more agitated with each trip around the roundabout, never noticing they weren’t actually getting anywhere (Look, kids. Big Ben. Parliament).

This level of fanatical public interrogation on the matter almost made this philosophy major wonder if there’s a platonic form out there labeled Electability that I just never saw mentioned in any of the Socratic Dialogues, and we’re all stuck in a frenzied search for earthly manifestations of it in every presidential candidate. And, sadly, it seems none of the brown, black, Asian, and female folks running are able to measure up to the heavenly ideal.

Look, I get it. This election is massively important. And not just in the way that every presidential election is called the most important election of our lives. This one is critical in a way that we can understand viscerally, not just academically. Four more years with this tweet crazy madman at the helm will surely lead us straight into the deadly (and melting) iceberg lingering not-so-distantly on the horizon. We can’t afford to lose in November, which means no one wants to go all in for a candidate that can’t ultimately win big on Election Day.

Given these legitimate and albeit somewhat hysterical concerns, I’ve talked to many dozens of people who demand to know who can win against Trump, because that’s who they want to support in the Primary. They never mention who they like. They might not like anyone, not really. They’re much more interested in the odds. They want me to whisper the name of the person that will win, as though I know such a thing simply because I work in politics.

I tell everyone who asks the same thing: vote for the person you love in the Primary and then vote for the Democrat on the ballot in November. If luck exists as something more than our crossed fingers and anxious entreaties, it’ll be the same candidate.

But this advice isn’t good enough. These people are desperate to keep from making the ‘wrong’ choice. And they look to me as an authority (how did we get here, America?!) that can ensure they make the ‘right’ choice. These folks don’t have time to waste. The Primary’s coming. They need to know who’s going to win big. They need to know who’s electable. They want me to tell them the name of the person guaranteed to deliver us from this ever worsening nightmare.

Okay, I lied before. But I’m ready to come clean now. I do know who can win in November, and I’m willing to tell you, provided you really want to know. Lean in close…

The candidate that can win is the one for whom we vote.

Mind blowing, right?

But it’s true. And I tell people this too, even though very few actually want to hear it. They want a silver bullet that will slay the were-asshole currently occupying the White House, but all we have is our votes, our sweat equity, and our enthusiasm. The candidate we believe in, the one we’re willing to work for, to put in volunteer hours for, to eventually cast a ballot for, is the one that can win.

The field of Democratic candidates has already been culled of the black, Hispanic, and Asian hopefuls, each a victim of the cult of electability. And what does that word even mean, anyway? If we’re being real, electability is code for white male. And why wouldn’t it be? Besides one solitary individual, all of the other 44 presidents have been white and male. And because white supremacy and misogyny are deeply ingrained in our culture, no matter your race, your sex, your level of self-identified wokeness, when we look at that office, too many of us see it as the sole territory of white men. Throughout history, they’ve always led at the highest levels. Why shouldn’t they keep leading? And, no, Obama’s election didn’t fix this situation, or we wouldn’t still be having this conversation. He’s the exception that proves the rule, not the outlier that breaks it down.

We can’t identify this as a problem until we say it out loud. And we can’t fix it until we hold ourselves, those around us, and the punditry class accountable. Electability just means who we vote for. And no one is unelectable simply by virtue of their race or gender. No one ever says that part out loud, but why has no one asked about the electability of the white male candidates, including one that’s not even out of his thirties? Imagine a 38 year old woman running for president having never held statewide office. She’d have been laughed off the stage and then eaten alive for her ostentatiousness alone…

Electability is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, here’s my advice, if you still care to hear it. Vote for the candidate you believe in. The candidate that lights a fire under your ass and makes you want to donate, knock doors, make phone calls, or just bother the hell out of your friends and family because you can’t stop talking about how great the person is. That’s who can win, if more of us commit to putting in the hard work, the donations, and the votes. Don’t fall victim to the bullshit myth of electability. That’s just a way of keeping diverse candidates from daring to imagine they could one day ascend to the White House.

Electability is what our votes say it is.

When it comes time to cast my ballot in the Primary, I plan to vote for the candidate I believe is best suited to be president, the one I want to see in the White House in 2021. There’s no magic to it. Just votes. So, vote.

Image Source

America, We Are Not Okay

by 28 Comments

I recently went to lunch with my mom and one of her friends. We were looking forward to a nice, normal meal at a place my mom and I had never been. The food didn’t disappoint, but the conversation stuck with me long after we left the restaurant and went our separate ways. It underscored why I do this work and validated not just the need of it, but the obligation of doing it if you find yourself in a position that allows you to dedicate your life to it. But sometimes a situation sucker punches you in the jaw, and you have to hunch into the surprise of that sudden, shocking discomfort before you can move on. That’s what happened to me as that otherwise pleasant lunch unfolded, and I had to take a moment to collect my thoughts, to gather the raw feelings of anger and helplessness and turn them into fuel that might succeed at powering something worthwhile.

We’ll call my mom’s friend Susan for the sake of simplicity and anonymity, but feel quite free to think of Susan as your friend, your neighbor, your sister, your mother, or your cousin. Susan could be anyone and, in point of fact, she is far too many of us in this country.

We ordered our food and sat down in a shady spot outdoors. The weather was perfect, not sticky hot as Florida is wont to be, and not too cool either. The food was delicious and I was digging the company and the carefree time spent untethered from my computer. The conversation stayed light, with laughter interspersed throughout, but the words were heavy. At the end of the afternoon, the weight was nearly insupportable. And I wasn’t even living this life. I was only hearing about it.

Susan has a government job and has worked there for decades. She’s eligible for retirement, but can’t afford to quit working for several more years. Her kids are grown. She’s a single woman. She has health issues that her insurance doesn’t cover, leaving her in the lurch for thousands of dollars after seeking care, without which she might not have been able to continue getting to and from work. Speaking of work, that government job she’s had for more than two dozen years? Yeah, it doesn’t pay enough to cover her basic living expenses, so she works a second job on weekends and late into the evenings after working a full day at what should be a good job.

Despite all of this, Susan is upbeat and seems to enjoy life. But she deserves more. She’s worked hard her entire life. Isn’t that the key to success in this country? You work hard, you find a job that offers health benefits, and you work your way up the ladder of success. But what happens when the ladder stops abruptly only a few rungs above the ground? What happens when that much-coveted health insurance doesn’t pay for jack shit and, no matter how hard you toil, you never receive a single cost of living increase to your wages? What then?

Y’all, our system is broken when working hard for more than 25 years leaves you facing the decision to either live in poverty or take a second job in the service industry. After that much time in the workforce, you should be able to live comfortably and retire with dignity. I know that some of y’all are members of the choir to which I’m preaching, but there are so many others that don’t see this problem for what it is. They blame folks like Susan for not being good enough, hardworking enough, smart enough, etc. But what else was she supposed to do? She secured what has traditionally been considered a good job — a position in the government, complete with health insurance — and worked hard for decades. Wasn’t that supposed to be the price of the golden ticket that allows you access to the fabled American Dream? If not, what is?

People sometimes respond to my entreaties that jobs should pay a living wage and folks should have access to quality healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt them when they try to use it with: people should just get a better job if they don’t like the one they have.

Great. Yep. Awesome advice that I’m sure no one ever thought of before. And sick people should just get better, amirite? If I start rolling my eyes now, I might never stop…

We raise our kids to believe the American Dream is a real thing they can achieve one day if they stick to the path through the wilderness of adulthood. Step off the path and you might never find your way back, but if you finish high school and go to college, you can get one of those good jobs. And that’s the goal, right? A good job that pays your bills, lets you (lightly) spoil your kids and take a family vacation every summer, all the while allowing you to put away a shiny nest egg you don’t break open until the golden years of your retirement. Perfect.

But it’s also unattainable af.

I grew up thinking a college degree was some kind of skeleton key that would open a whole host of doors. Not any door, but enough of them that the sky would be the fucking limit. So, I got a college degree…in philosophy. As you can imagine, my key didn’t unlock many doors. And when I was looking to go back to work outside the home after writing and raising a child for several years, it didn’t open any doors at all. I had to go back to school for two semesters to earn a paralegal certificate that allowed me to work in a law office wrangling attorneys. But that cost money and time a lot of folks don’t have, making it a privilege, a non-option, a locked door. And, anyway, it’s bullshit. I had a college degree, and it wasn’t enough. I know folks with graduate degrees that aren’t enough.

The system is broken.

After lunch, I told my mother that this was why I did this work. Susan’s experience. My own. Millions of other people that I will never meet. Hard work should be enough to succeed in this country. No one should work for 30 years and still find themselves one paycheck away from calamity. I’m a firm believer in personal responsibility, but the system is stacked against too many of us at birth, and it hardly matters what path we take through the wilderness. Even if you do everything right, you might still find yourself unable to earn a golden ticket. No matter how many locks you try, your key only opens a small number of doors, and none of them leads to the American Dream. You’ll stay in that darkened hallway for the rest of your life, searching for light, believing that you are to blame.

That’s not okay. None of this is. I have to believe that more is possible. That we can do better in this country. That we can unlock these doors to opportunity. That we can let in the light.

Image Source

Racism 101: White Privilege

by 4 Comments

I post a lot about race, and not just because I’m a glutton for punishment, although I’m sure that plays a significant role. I’m a black woman in a country that was built with the unpaid blood, sweat, and tears of people that looked like me. Those same people were ‘liberated’ after the Civil War, only to be crushed beneath the bootheel of Jim Crow for the next hundred years, a campaign of abject oppression and terror, the echoes of which we can still feel reverberating to the present day.

When you’re black in America, you can’t forget it. It’s transcendental — the condition upon which all other experiences are made possible. Your color informs your every waking movement. The moment you draw your first breath, it sets boundaries you might never overcome. It creates an alternate set of expectations and limitations, all unwritten but strictly enforced, and you disregard them at your peril. Thinking, talking, and posting about race isn’t so much an option for me as it is a requirement.

Like clockwork, in response to one of my many posts about race, a white individual will respond with a lightly admonishing comment that goes a little something like this: Why all of this divisiveness? We need to focus on one race, the HUMAN RACE.

Quaint, right?

What I feel upon reading dismissive, somewhat Pollyanna responses like this to my lived experience as a black individual in this country isn’t so much annoyance (or shock, because this is a pretty standard response, if I’m being honest), as it is bone weariness. The kind of weariness you feel after working a long day only to find your car won’t start and your phone is dead, meaning you’ll need to walk a few miles home in pouring rain and lashing wind. This mental and emotional exhaustion can be all consuming, because it feels like no matter how many times you explain slavery’s enduring legacy, how systems of oppression work (and how this is distinct from individual racists), why it’s damaging to say you don’t see color, there will always be responses like this aimed at making you feel ashamed for always dwelling on race.

White folks, let me tell you, living your life without needing to take race into constant consideration is the very definition of privilege. It’s a magical realm of existence that’s completely closed off to black folks, to Hispanic folks, to Asian folks, to indigenous folks. We have to think about race all the time. Our lives depend on it. Our freedom, our livelihoods, our very opportunity for happiness. We exist in this country at all times as nonwhite. There have been whole systems of oppression constructed to penalize us for being nonwhite. These systems have worked so well for so long, white folks no longer even see them. What they see is that nonwhite people struggle because they don’t work hard enough. They don’t value education. They are just more likely to commit crimes. They don’t speak English well. They are lazy. They waste the limitless opportunities doled out equally to every American at birth. It’s sad, really, how those nonwhites are.

White privilege is the ability to exist as a person while the rest of us exist as nonwhite people, together with all the negative stereotypes that, thanks to our deeply racist institutions, too often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I can already hear the grumbled complaints from aggrieved white people:

That’s not fair! I’ve faced real struggles in my life!

I had to work hard for everything I have! I wasn’t given anything on a silver platter!

I grew up poor too! How can I have privilege?

Let me tell you what white privilege doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you haven’t struggled in your lives, white folks. It doesn’t mean you haven’t known poverty. It doesn’t mean you haven’t worked hard or faced difficult situations or gone to bed hungry or survived without healthcare, a place to live, or a job that pays a decent wage. It doesn’t mean you haven’t watched, heartbroken, as your kids go without. White people can struggle. They can live difficult lives and never get ahead. But the reason for that difficulty is never their race. There aren’t centuries’ old systems in place to make sure that they fail based solely on the color of their skin. There’s a real issue of economic inequality in this country that desperately needs to be addressed, but imagine that layered on top of racial inequality, which is systemic. It is purposeful. It was put in place by white folks that did their best to make sure black and brown folks never got ahead in this country. Can you see how that’s different?

So, no, we can’t pretend we live in some post racial utopia where we all receive the same opportunities as Americans. We can’t pretend we are all just one race, the human race. That’s how the world looks through the rose-colored glasses of privilege. Not considering race in every facet of your life, with every breath that you take, is a privilege. Not fearing for your child’s safety simply because of the color of his or her skin is a privilege. Have you ever sat your child down and discussed exactly how to interact with the police because you’re afraid there could be a shoot first, ask questions later scenario, all because your child happens to be black, and sometimes that’s enough of a reason for an officer to open fire? No? That’s privilege.

No one’s asking you to apologize for slavery. But the founders of this country that built prosperity on the backs of the enslaved looked like you. The architects of Jim Crow looked like you. The folks that carefully crafted the New Deal in a way that wouldn’t benefit black Americans looked like you. The folks that waged the War on Drugs and lay the groundwork for every iteration of getting tougher and tougher on (black) crime looked like you. These white folks made damned sure to put systems in place that barred people that looked like me from ever being able to achieve the fabled life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that they enshrined for themselves. We were meant to toil, to obey, to die when we were no longer useful. The very foundation of this nation was constructed upon that baseline inequality, and it has flourished in the centuries since those founding documents were created.

You didn’t ask for your privilege, but you have it. So, now what?

Step one: accept that this privilege is a real thing.

Step two: use the fuck out of it to challenge racism in all its forms.

Lean into your privilege like the shield of legitimacy it is and tear down the systemic inequality that still festers, relatively unhindered, in this country and all its institutions. No matter where you find yourself on the ladder of social status, you have power that black and brown folks don’t possess. Instead of pretending that power doesn’t exist, use it. Challenge other white folks. Be rabidly anti-racist. Don’t just share delusional platitudes about little black children playing with little white children and folks being judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin. We aren’t there yet. We’ve never been there. We aren’t even close.

Just by virtue of your skin color, you are endowed with the unique power to tear down systems that benefit you as white and oppress me as black. If black, brown, Asian, and indigenous folks could destroy these systems ourselves, trust and believe it would already be done. We need you to step in and step up. Your privilege is a battering ram that opens doors. Use it to knock down the status quo instead of buttressing it.

No one is asking you to apologize for being born white. But, goddamn it, open your eyes and see this country for what and how it is. Stop berating marginalized people for pointing out inequality because it makes you uncomfortable. Step into this fight in a meaningful way, because the fabled Promised Land isn’t guaranteed. Racism isn’t something that just fades away if we ignore it. It’s the kind of thing that metastasizes in dark spaces. It stretches out. It grows. Think of your privilege as a spotlight. Point at racism and shine the fuck away, white folks.

Image Source