Seeing the post by atiredtrans urging people to not just listen to Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe, in addition to white lesbians and white bi women acting like Janelle has neeeeever been gnc because their only stuff they know is DC which is the first time she’s showed herself in parts of it being more feminine, reminds me of the fact that white LGBT people who say they support LGBT poc really only… Perform this allyship with LGBT poc.
Here’s the thing. When LGBT poc ask support from white LGBT people or for them to confront their racism, we’re not asking for you to ONLY extend any sort of compassion or interest towards those of us who’re gay/bi/trans.
You’re white. No matter how gay or trans you are, you’re exactly just as white as your cishet counterparts. Most of you say you understand that but you really don’t. If you did, you’d understand that working on your racism doesn’t simply end with LGBT poc, it’s about you in regards to ALL poc. When you stop at LGBT poc, it demonstrates that you think your whiteness is cancelled out by your gayness/transness and thus you should only give a shit about LGBT poc because with us the field is leveled up in that regard by us being gay/bi/trans.
Your whiteness weights JUST as much in regards to LGBT poc as it does in regards to cishet poc. Your whiteness doesn’t stop benefiting you when the poc in front of you is cis and straight. You’re JUST as dangerous and oppressive to cishet poc as you are to LGBT poc. You aren’t less white in relation to cishet poc than you are in relation to LGBT poc.
Cishet poc, while entirely capable of being exactly as homo/transphobic as cishet white people, don’t level their social power as cishet people over LGBT white people, they do it over LGBT poc. That doesn’t mean that they do not inflict their homo/transphobia on white people, of course not, but it does mean that the exertion of power there is not at all comparable to the one exerted by cishet white people. And when it comes to ANY form of abuse, it is a statistic truth that people mostly inflict it upon those of their own community, so cishet poc concentrate the vast majority of their homo/transphobic violence on LGBT poc.
Cishet poc fear you, more than you’d ever think, because race is a system in a way homo/transphobia isn’t, and the exact same way that white women, white poor people and white disabled people voted for Trump in their majority because they align more with their whiteness than with their womanhood/disability/social class, white LGBT people also prioritize their whiteness over their gayness/transness. That’s why you have white supremacist LGBT white people, even though white supremacists in general are also extremely homo/transphobic. You guys KNOW that ultimately whiteness gives you tremendous power that being cishet doesn’t grant to poc, although it does give them some.
It’s why, too, if you ask around, LGBT poc often receive more support from cishet poc than from white LGBT people. It’s why Janet Mock mentions that when she’s at any event, cis woc show up MUCH more than trans white women.
When you only extend your support to poc who’re gay/bi/trans, this is what you’re telling us: your interest in combating racism is conditional. You only give a shit when you have something in common with the poc in question. Which is why so many of you who preach about being allies to us immediately turn to racist abuse whenever we prioritize race over gayness/transness. You see our gayness/transess as the only bit of who we are that’s worth your time, effort or attention.
What’s more, is that at the end of the day, the people in our immediate communities, from day one, are other poc regardless of if they’re LGBT or not, and the increased rates of poverty and violence we face are directly tied to the rates of poverty and violence poc as a whole face. As long as all poc face material violence and disenfranchisement, LGBT poc will continue to do so. LGBT poc’s conditions are intrinsically tied to those of poc as a whole. If something benefits white LGBT people it won’t necessarily benefit us, but whatever benefits all poc, WILL.
You cannot expect to make this world safer for LGBT poc without making this world safer for ALL poc. You just can’t.
I understand prioritizing LGBT poc above cishet poc, I really do, but you can’t cherry-pick to which poc you’ll give your support or not. You’re white, you’re not in a position that could ever justify such a thing unless idk, they’re a terf/a rapist/an abuser/etc.
You either support ALL of us, or you support none.
I hope the whites who read this and simply give a like only do that instead of reblogging because it doesn’t occur to them that they can do that.
White people who openly say that “Diversity is a code word for white genocide” are explicitly stating white people are too weak to survive if they have to compete equally for resources and would literally die out- literally go extinct- without being protected and isolated for their safety.
Y’all white people need to do something about those weak links among you.
It might seem like this argument would work but it doesn’t 😦 I mean, it works against people who are on the fence, but committed white supremacists already have a practiced answer: the white race is always the best and smartest and strongest and whenever they’re not, it’s because traitors on the inside (Jewish people) stabbed them in the back. It’s the same argument Hitler used to rise to power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth
This is an incredibly powerful explanatory model if you choose to believe in it. Everything good you do is because you’re naturally good and deserve it: everything bad you do is because an enemy made you do it.
It also doesn’t work for the same reason why “so you think you’re the master race but Asians and Jews are inherently smarter?” doesn’t work. They don’t so much see themselves as the best at everything ever as much as the creators of everything wonderful that has existed. They see all the pretty cathedrals in Europe and go “this is the pinnacle of human achievement and we will never get back to anything like it.” They think any intermixing between White and non-White cultures will lead to the end of civilization as we know it. They justify all of this with some really bad evolutionary psychology. It’s all rubbish of course but it’s attractive to people who are willfully ignorant of science and history.
I will be very, very honest with you, because I feel that is the best thing for me to do:
The morning of my beit din, one of the Rabbis was a few minutes late. We were concerned he might have ended up even more late than that, but luckily, he wasn’t. The reason for his being a few minutes late was because he worked at the local JCC/Day School and the entire campus had to be evacuated that morning because another wave of bomb threats had been phoned in. I’m not sure if it was the second, or the third.
So imagine, not being me (waiting nervously in the Synagogue library), but instead being that Rabbi. His morning schedule – whatever it was he normally would have done as a Rabbi of the community – was interrupted by a death threat to him, his colleagues, anyone on the campus, and the children under their care. Coffee, Breakfast, Work, Phoned in Bomb Threat, Evacuation, and then waiting for an all clear.
…Then serving a beit din for a conversion candidate.
You may imagine that most Rabbis or even most beit dins will bring up the issue of antisemitism, and that it is a serious part of the process of educating a conversion candidate.
This rabbi was the one to bring it up on my beit din. He had, after all, spent his morning evacuating a Jewish organization’s building and talking with police, and he thought it was important to question if, given the circumstances, I was really going to throw my lot in.
He wasn’t necessarily turning me away, but he was definitely questioning my judgement, if you get what I mean. He wanted to know why, and he more or less asked something similar to what you are asking me.
My answer may not be your answer. My answer may not help you. My answer is a personal one.
I explained who I was already, and I don’t remember everything I said then to the letter, but this is more or less the essence of it: I am mixed race, I look white, but I am Mexican-American, and plenty of my family is visibly brown. If they are in danger for being Mexican, I am in danger. I was taught that the most dangerous gangs were neonazis and the KKK. I’ve worked in a Latino cultural center where we had to make the choice to be non-political in Arizona because if we put up political art, we might have rocks thrown through our windows, or worse.
A white supremacist murdered a friend of mine’s family – the culmination of an evil, slimy scumbag of a human being worming his way into a woman’s life, abusing her, and terrorizing her, her children, and baby grandchild. I went to the candlelight vigil, the triple funeral (a fourth person also died), my friend the only survivor in the house.
I pointed out then that I am not going to ever be out of the line of fire of acceptable targets for white supremacists or neonazis. My existence will never be acceptable to those kinds of people anyways, so letting them dictate my choices through fear doesn’t leave me with very many choices. I didn’t really need to find extra or newfound strength, because I am applying already learned skills to a new scenario. Minorities in America do not have the luxury of going about their existence without any sense of fear for them or their families. We just don’t.
I also don’t believe that I would have stopped interacting with the Jewish community if I hadn’t finished my conversion. It would be foolish to state I have no fear whatsoever, but also at some point, I have recognized my entire life has included navigating fear.
Anyone can be afraid. Anyone can want to hide. Hiding is a strong survival mechanism. So is fleeing. It’s a privilege to recognize you have safety, and few people are eager to forfeit their own safety. I don’t see any point in diminishing that. Your average WASP has led a life which has not prepared you for the idea that people who don’t know you might want you dead on principle of your ethnicity. Even on a smaller scale – there’s probably been almost no vandalism in your daily life that marks a place, location, or world that is not welcoming for you.
I don’t think there’s any particular answer I can give.
Perhaps it is more prudent to answer a question with a question:
Are you underestimating yourself, or are you doing what is best for you?
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