I follow Saira Rao on Twitter. She talks about hard things. Sometimes scrolling by catches me like a slap in the face and that, my friends, is often Cold Hard Truth smacking some ever-loving sense into me. So I was rolling through last night when I came upon this:
These are great opportunities – people of color willing to share how white people fail or succeed as an ally. It’s a gift, really. I started scrolling through the comments, trying to learn, and you know what popped up?
Some white dude giving his decidedly unsolicited opinion on the matter. Right there in the first ten replies. Daaaammmmnnnn.
His response isn’t surprising. “And if the answer is no, what does that make white people? The enemy?” Um, no, Dick, it makes them not a real ally. The question was not complicated. Oh, and she wasn’t asking you.
Because I’ve decided calling out my white people is the very least I can do, I speak up.
As you can imagine that didn’t sit too well with Dick; he had some things to say. No way I’m loaning him my platform, though, so let’s just say he specializes in pissy snark. He wasn’t swayed by my suggestion that we might try recognizing whiteness doesn’t own every damn space and if Saira asked for POC feedback then insisting on inserting ourselves into the conversation is childish.
Yeah. That really didn’t sit well with Dick or the other But I Have An Opinion And I Deserve To Speak Too white folks who came along afterward.
It’s okay, he wasn’t my end goal. I mean, sure, in a rainbows and unicorns world he would have read my tweet and thought to himself Gee, I really DID insert myself into a space specifically designated for Not Me. I shouldn’t do that anymore. The optimistic part of me thinks well, it’s sitting somewhere in his subconscious, maybe twenty years from now it’ll click. The realistic part of me thinks yeah, he thinks I’m an idiot.
Either way, I did what needed to be done. I called out the white guy for stepping in where he didn’t belong. White male voices are so conditioned to being the most privileged ones in the room it seemed oppressive to him that his opinion was not only irrelevant but unwelcome, and people of color shouldn’t have to fight that battle day in and day out.
These things need to be said, and they need to be said by white people.
Riddle from the Middle 
Besides being intrusive, his mistake of assuming a response of no, white people cannot be real allies, would mean they/we are enemies is part of the all or nothing, divisive thinking that infects our country like a disease. I am curious about the responses, but a non ally doesn’t have to be an enemy. There are so many more possibilities, just like there are many colors between black and white.
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You’re right, it really was an all or nothing knee-jerk reaction. Most often I catch it from white folks who think they’re woke (or ARE woke but we’re all in varying stages of learning) and are insulted by the suggestion that they might not be considered an ally. It’s the whole BUT *I’M* NOT LIKE THAT response that kind of proves the point of the question. You can’t demand allyship.
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I don’t ‘get’ Twitter. I never will. And this is YOUR space and not mine, and I need to remember and respect that fact. We’ve discussed white ‘supremacy before and so you probably know my thoughts on the subject. Still. The woman asking the original tweet did preface it with ONLY people of color. And the guy should have kept his entitled yapper shut. People like him, though, can’t do that. Everything is about them and their opinion. Thankfully (in my opinion) he’s a small minority of white persons overall. And yeah there’s a lot in that ‘minority’ granted. My final thought is did the woman asking the question really want unbiased answers or was she looking more for solidarity among her own demographic? Asking questions like that (not that they shouldn’t be asked) only leads to more division and labeling in my opinion.
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She clearly expresses her opinion in other tweets but my impression is that she was genuinely touching base with the community on this one. The comments were a combination of flat out no and yes (usually qualified with how) & I found them useful. There were several people in your camp – about asking the question causes division – but I don’t see how we’re supposed to better understand each other if we don’t hear the hard stuff, too.
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Like you said: The question was not complicated. Only a Dick could make it so. What a world, eh?
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You know I love me some twitter but damn, those Dicks sure do feel comfortable raging at full volume on there. [HUGE eye roll here]
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I think the little (correct) jabs sit with these people more than they let on. They don’t like being called-out with the facts they choose to ignore. You may not change anything, but you never know.
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I am resting heavily on the fact that I’ll never know my full effect on the universe. I’m just gonna keep putting it out there and pushing for change…
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It’s all you can do. You do it well.
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Thank you, Dan.
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You are so right to point all this out. Chelsea Handler deals with this in her new documentary https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80244973
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We watched that one recently and earlier this week I heard a segment on NPR where they were interviewing people of color on race projects. It’s good that Chelsea is opening the conversation with a new group of people but she still went to POC to do some of that work. They’ve done enough. But boy, that meeting she had with the white Republican women…whoa boy!
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Ikr it’s shocking!
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I almost hate to call it shocking cuz…well…it wasn’t exactly unexpected. But to actually *hear* them say some of that stuff with a straight face?? 😐
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You are so right on this. It’s astonishing that this is 2019 and we still have such a crap broken society.
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I’m pulling out my new motto: not surprised, just disappointed.
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Absolutely true.
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💛
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