,
24 tweets,
3 min read
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1/ Sooo... I'm gonna be blunt about this. I was born and raised in the South, my family is from the South, and we need to get real. (thread)
2/ No more equivocations. No more "let's try to understand Trump folks". No more "both sides". Stop this bullshit now.
3/ Stop romanticizing Southern "heritage", but more than that, we need to be calling out those who do romanticize the Old South.
4/ I'm serious. Good on you for not displaying a Confederate flag. I'm glad you didn't vote for Trump. Congratulations on the bare minimum.
5/ But our neighbors and our friends and our family who do these things without pushback from us will continue to do them.
6/ Those racist assholes with torchlights marching on UVA's campus are your nextdoor neighbors, friends, and relatives.
7/ How many times have you seen a "good kid" in a polo shirt say something racist and let it go? Be honest with yourself.
8/ How many times have you heard your racist uncle rant at the Thanksgiving table about "illegals stealing our jobs"? Be honest.
9/ How many times has your father or mother or boss or coworker talked in racist code around you and you didn't call them out? Be honest.
10/ Folks, if you ever wondered what you would have done in Nazi Germany, wonder no more. You're here. This is it. It's real.
11/ And allowing for "wiggle room" on some bullshit excuse of "Southern heritage" is unacceptable. No exceptions. Period.
12/ This is not just on Trump and his minions. This is on us. Every white person who has been silent shares blame re: Charlottesville.
13/ You, me, your parents, my parents, our friends and relatives and coworkers across the country, but especially the South: this is on us.
14/ And until we accept our responsibility for white supremacy on an individual level, we might as well be useless in this fight.
15/ I have enabled white supremacy every time I've been silent. So have you. We need to recognize this and no longer be silent.
16/ We need to demand every Confederate monument, every flag, every racist comment or joke, all of it, needs to be challenged.
17/ This is not going away. If Trump were removed from office tomorrow, this problem would still exist. IT. IS. NOT. GOING. AWAY.
18/ And the more we wait for someone to come along and fix this for us, the more we are complicit in how white supremacy spreads.
19/ No one's coming. This is it. We're the ones who have to fix it. And nothing will be fixed with silence. Nothing. Silence will kill.
20/ Put away your Dr. King quotations. Stop saying you voted for Obama. Press pause on Beyoncé. We need to do the actual work.
21/ No more safety pins. No more surface-level statements. We all need to commit to challenging racism where it exists around us.
22/ In the workplace. At school. On the street. At City Hall. At church. In night and broad daylight. We must fight back in these places.
23/ We've been dragging our asses because we didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, most of all ourselves. We need to get uncomfortable.
24/ Please, please, please, if you're white, especially in the South, take this to heart. Lives depend on us doing better. /thread
