White Allies: You Don’t Get to Not Be White Right Now
Two weeks ago a dear white friend of mine reposted a TikTok video in her Instagram story of a clever white young man saying “I denounce my whiteness. I’m off-white, I’m beige, you can call me pink, you can call me snowflake… I don’t care what you call me just don’t call me white. Those people on the news— those are white people…”*
I couldn’t formulate a complete sentence in response to that video because I was experiencing trauma in real time.
How dare you.
I have wanted so badly to write about my feelings after seeing the attack at the Capitol live on television but I feel I’m out of words. I was in line at a COVID test facility, waiting in my car with 1% battery on my phone receiving countless texts from friends saying “have you seen this yet?” And I had. I had seen it. And I couldn’t stop watching.
I don’t know what I expected to see that day. I have lived as and American too long to have hope in a savior. I have lived as a Black woman in America too long to believe that this was an accident, an unfortunate event, or even anything but a predictable demonstration of the force of white supremacy. I watched that day, expressionless and cold, as the veil of “well maybe it was just…” was lifted, revealing the man behind the curtain to in fact be droves of white fear and…