1/ As people flee Twitter, or threaten to, in response to Elon’s takeover and the harassment it has already spawned and likely will bc of less content moderation, there are some things I’ve noticed. Please follow this thread and share it. It’s sorta important…
2/ To illustrate the point I want to make (and will, shortly), first, a brief story. It takes place in New Orleans, in 1996. I am sitting in a workshop (as a participant, not facilitator), and we are discussing racism and community building…
3/ After a Black woman has been sharing her stories of dealing with racism, a white woman begins to cry. As one does. Then when the facilitator calls on her, she talks about how “hard” this work is and how dispiriting…
4/ She despairs of ever undoing racism, either among some in her own family or professional circles, or society more broadly. She again talks of how “hard” it all is and how it makes her want to give up sometimes…
5/ At this point the Black woman who had previously spoken reached out, touched her leg, and with a cutting snark too brilliant for the white woman to get it, said, “Is it hard, dear?” The white woman cried more and insisted it was, yes…
6/ That day was the day I forever understood that Black people are possibly the only thing standing in the way of utter destruction. White folks, even liberal ones, will often fold up their tents and go home when it gets too difficult…
7/ But Black people cannot, by and large, do this. They have never been able to do this. They have to stay and fight no matter the cost. Now, back to the “Twexodus”…
8/ I can’t say it scientifically. Not even sure how to prove it quantitatively. But I can say that after much careful observation, the people threatening to jump ship (and from what I know those who have) have been overwhelmingly white…
9/ Even as Black Twitter catches the most hell, deals with racism, misogynoir, all the things, all the time…they are here, fighting and refusing to concede this ground…
10/ While a distressing number of white progressives talk about how “toxic” it will become (or has already) and how they just can’t be around that. “Is it hard, dear?” Rings in my ears yet again…
11/ And yes, I know that women face more than I do as a man. Rape threats are an entirely different thing. I get it. But, um, yeah, so Black women face that every day. They aren’t bailing the same way…
12/ To those white folks worried about Twitter toxicity. Please, AMERICA has been toxic for Black people for hundreds of years. If they can manage to fight on, survive and thrive despite it, you can deal with ugliness in your timeline.
13/ And please know none of this is meant to romanticize suffering or the strength often born of it. It is simply to say that when you’ve been wading thru the shit for hundreds of years, you learn how to wade through it. It’s the only choice you have…
14/ But when you haven’t had to (a privilege) it’s easy to take your toys and go home, so to speak. I think the white folks who DON’T do this tend to be those of us whose consciousness was formed by the Black freedom struggle…
15/ because when THAT was your entry point for social awareness you learn that justice is a long game, and you might well never see it. Better than you have come and gone without seeing it. But you have to take your place in the long line of those willing to die for it…
16/ White folks who, on the other hand, were not principally informed by that struggle get dispirited easily because they haven’t learned from that inter generational resilience…
17/ Some of us came to anti racism first, and THEN our progressive politics because of how we were raised and around whom (this is often the Southern white progressive story). Others came to progressive politics and then that included anti-racism but just as one of many issues…
18/ I would say that if you come to your anti racism just as one more thing in your liberal/left bag of issues, you won’t be ready for the difficulty you’ll face no matter which issues you focus on in your work/life…
19/…but if you start with a grounding in the Black freedom struggle, or develop that grounding, you will develop the kind of resolve and long-view that keeps you in the fight and wards off the kind of despondency that leads many to pack it in…
20/ James Baldwin explained it this way: “If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it bring must be borne…” Black people know this. White progressives must learn it.
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