Thread by @erikaheidewald

There's a moment in Exterminate All the Brutes where Raoul Peck says that the determining factor why the European colonists killed so many indigenous people was not sophisticated weaponry or imported germs, but the willingness to slaughter human beings in order to take their land

I just keep thinking about it. Because that is the difference. One kind of person decided that they were better than other people so those other people deserved to die and then framed it as some natural evolutionary competition. violence became a virtue. and we still live in that

It's weird to talk about being white, mostly because there are so many ways to do it wrong and white people do them all the time. There aren't a lot of good examples. The trope I most want to avoid falling into is “I'm not like other white people,” which all white people love

I'm not afraid to take my part of the responsibility or to acknowledge the implicit bias and white fragility I've worked hard to excise from my brain. I'm not someone very burdened by shame in general so that's not a stumbling block for me.

I'm not bothered by the “unfairness” of taking responsibility for problems I didn't start. Life isn't fair and it's been far less fair to many other people. I have many unfair advantages I did nothing to earn and those problems aren't in the past, nothing is over. It's now.

My problem is that I just don't understand white people. I always thought that was due to growing up around conservative Christians, of course we were completely different. But as an adult, meeting more white people, there's this whole emotional story I don't understand

My family has been an isolated island for generations, creating our own neurodivergent culture, inviting in the people we meet who love and understand us & fitting in nowhere. We are loud, discuss our feelings openly, are not prone to following rules yet have strong shared values

we struggle with finding any kind of place in society, & some of us never find one. our pain is all out in the open. The “keep the peace,” hide your feelings, never talk about uncomfortable subjects thing that permeates white culture didn't exist for us so I don't fucking get it

Why are white people so emotionally attached to their white fragility? It's your fragility. It's a really apt label. It's a pathetic weakness wearing a flak jacket to appear strong. Why want to keep that? The second I recognized it in myself I wanted to get it the fuck out

How were there people willing to slaughter human beings for their land? How can people be like that? I don't know. How can people ignore it because it's uncomfortable? Who the fuck cares! What's wrong with being uncomfortable? Will you die? No! you won’t fucking die!

It's my responsibility to do what I can and reach who I can, I can't abdicate that responsibility by writing people off as bad or alienating them but I don't always know how to reach people & I feel frustrated and stuck. I don't know how to get people to let their fragility go

White guilt is a concept white people made up so they would never have to stop being racist. Do you know how worthless feeling guilty is? How useless? Thinking about what a piece of shit you are all the time is still thinking about yourself all the time. It's self-indulgent.

I know that's really harsh to say to sensitive people who’ve heard similar messages from a cruel world but you don't have to stop being sensitive. You shouldn't stop. You just have to change what you do with it. Find away to take that same feeling and make it useful.

Another part in Exterminate All the Brutes shows white men with Black and Indigenous women being forced to act affectionate with them and I thought about what a sickness that is. Not just to invade a country, but then need it to love you. What a gaping chasm inside of those men

White feelings can be very dangerous. White people put their feelings over other people's lives. This culture has only unhelpful ways of speaking about feelings - they are either weakness to be ignored or some sacred thing to be honored. Neither of those are productive

If you're white and autistic, you're never really welcome in the club. There is a world of whiteness that revolves around social norms and hierarchies you can't navigate. White allistics know you don’t belong. But white autistics are still part of whiteness.

One crucial place I’d urge white autistics to remember that your race is a major factor is when expressing your feelings. Your feelings are not sacred and you’re not entitled to keep all of them. It's your responsibility not to let them speak for you. Don’t speak to POC in anger.

You will fuck it up. You will. No matter how justified your outrage feels, how sure you are that you're right, they do not need to hear from you right that moment or probably at all and you simply don't have the frames of reference to see the tropes you’d likely be playing into

I'm not addressing this to white autistics bc I think autistic people are the main source of white fragility & racism in the world today but bc that's the intersection of my identity and my audience. I can't change neurotypical people’s minds. They don't change or read my tweets

There is definitely more than enough racism for us to work on within the autistic community to clean up our own backyard and support & signal boost autistic POC who are erased within our community and attacked outside of it. Autism is not a white man’s club, that’s over.

There are many roadblocks in our way on the path to liberation but there are two that I can see are in our power to change & would make a big difference. How we feel about each other, and how we feel about ourselves - but most importantly, what we do with those feelings.

Self-esteem and solidarity are major threats to the hierarchy so of course autistic people are discouraged from them whenever possible. The next time you find yourself thinking it's somehow your moral responsibility to hate yourself, ask yourself –who is this helping right now?

Solidarity must start with listening because erasure is not solidarity. Think of how sure neurotypicals are that they know about autism - and how wrong they are. You are equally wrong about people you haven't taken the time to listen to. Your thoughts will be equally unhelpful.

Autistic people tend to be very confident in our logic but we are only as good as our data. White people, particularly white men, are rarely made to feel any need or see any value in learning someone else's perspective. You think you’re objective and can already figure it out.

That belief is incorrect and is the very mechanism at work that results in the world being run by people who believe they possess the greatest understanding when truly they possess the least. POC already learned our perspective, they had to. You're catching up.

improving your data will improve your conclusions. I guarantee that right now you hold some beliefs you've never critically analyzed & have barely thought about and you'll be embarrassed later that you ever believed them and glad you learned better. Learning is not a punishment:)