Super insightful, as usual. Thank you!! I don’t know if it’s because I am gay or because I am in perimenopause and have joined the “We do not care” club, but I’ve been writing off family and friends left and right since this election. I threw my spouses dad out of our car while on vacation for using a racial slur and haven’t spoken to him since. It’s not just ignorance, you are right! It is hate and evil and these people are not redeemable.
Yup. I’m 53 and on Election Day my husband asked his parents if they voted for Trump and when they said yes we cut them out of our lives. I mean it’s ridiculous that they could claim to love their mixed race, gay, neurodivergent, and trans family members and still vote for the ghoul who wants us all dead.
I’m actually shocked at how not sad I am about it. Like I have been expressing my leftist views openly for TWENTY YEARS and they still just don’t get it. My grandfather was the editor of the Harlem edition of the Daily Worker and he had an FBI file as thick as a phonebook. He was at the Highlander Folk School with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. There’s no way I’m gonna live my life in a way that doesn’t honor him.
My late father was a cash only, no social media guy who I thought was just overly paranoid. Turns out he was right about EVERYTHING.
When I met and married my husband he was a jazz musician in NYC. I knew his parents were kind of redneck-y but I figured we could all still get along. And we did as long as I dumbed myself down and faked admiration for their corny ways and bit my tongue year after year about politics and religion. Kind of refreshing to not have to do that anymore.
Yup. Left a 20 year marriage and escaped to a blue state with my YA kiddo before the election. Basically lost 90% of the "friends" I had because they sit around clutching their pearls about how bad everything has become but do NOTHING to change it. I have energy to actually effect some change where I am now because I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder in fear and there are enough like minded people to work with and actually achieve anything. Saying what I really think instead of breaking my brain trying to communicate with white Southerners who are never direct about ANYTHING. I'm post menopausal and queer and in my IDGAF era,
I'm also a member of the "I don't care" & I'm pretty sure that all my family members that were on the MAGA path have all died in the last 5 years (😂😂😂Stop! That's not nice!) My father in law was one of the bigoted people I've ever met - but because he knew he was very lucky to be a grandfather & didn't want to lose his opportunity to see his grandchildren, he watched his mouth. 😈
I have relatives who are MAGA who are younger than me. I have been working to keep communication open with them for the past 8 years based on Timothy Snyder's recommendations in "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century", but had to take a break this spring after repeatedly being drawn into circular arguments when I tried to alert them to the Trump Regime's dismantling of services they support.
Hey now!!! Wdnc here! I’m a member of the NY chapter. LOL! I cut off my dad and many other family and friends. I’m talking an entire community - they allowed room for MAGA. It wasn’t the hardest thing to do either. Values are what you make them. Just cause my family decided to become cultists didn’t mean I had to. I don’t even recognize them anymore. Living as though these people have died is a challenge. I tell my children the truth and that isn’t hard to do either but it hurts. In the years since I cut them off I have made a new family of people I have met who have done the exact same thing, cutting out their family. We do not care if we are family, there is no room for MAGA, we do not care.
Only if they stop insisting they are a race that doesn’t exist. As long as they and others insist on keeping up the illusion of race, the evil of racism is not going anywhere. It starts with them smashing their own ignorant delusions about themselves, only then can real progress be made on reaching equality and ensuring justice.
Reading this made me squirm uncomfortably. I have a lot of soul searching to do, clearly. This essay feels spot-on to me. That has to mean I see myself in it. And yes, I’m scared.
You're right. The white people who are so horrified have turned a blind eye to the fact that this is how marginalized people have been treated always. The usa has never been great. Thank you. I am learning so much from you.
Every time I see a post on social media talking about "this isn't us" or "this isn't the US", I just sadly shake my head because it IS. It's always been this. It just hasn't been so blatant & in your face in the recent past. And that's the power of whitewashing history.
Right? I keep telling them all to read history, to put themselves in the shoes of literally anyone other than their ancestors throughout our existence. The US is and has always been the bad guys. We are the villains of this era of human history, and only our willful ignorance allowed it to continue.
That's part of the joy of privilege. For my part, I was too wrapped up in my own struggles for a lot of my life to look below the bullshit (and I knew it was bullshit) I was taught in school. When I did start re-learning, I was way more than dismayed. Because the information isn't hidden. It's all over the internet & in books. The problem is that people, white people, need to be willing to be really fucking uncomfortable. I've come across things that the government & media has fed me over the years that I took for truth & I felt so ashamed for believing it. And angry. So unbelievably angry.
I had no Internet until I was well into my thirties, but not long after, I started discovering the lies and whitewashing, and yes. I was extremely angry. I'd always deeply valued education and discovering that the people responsible for mine were deceiving me the entire time was a brutal betrayal.
And talking to my family was an exercise in futility, not that I didn't try. Once Trump entered the race in 2016, I went no contact with most of them, and with the last of them in 2022. They disgust me so much that I'd be changing my name if I had the money to do so.
That's a shame. But I get it. Liberals don't want the accompanying guilt that comes with the realization that they should've been angry this whole time & only are now that the system is coming for them. It was a tough realization for me.
My mother stopped talking to me 3 years ago because of my anti racism and liberal bullshit. Her words. She did me a favor. The level of hate in that woman is scary
My racist uncle blocked *me* over a decade ago because he came on my page with some racist Islamophobic shit. My friends gently tried to call him in. He told my parents the liberal university had brainwashed me and all my friends were bullies. Weird, because he would have gotten the same response before college. Weird, because he was the aggressor. Weird, because the Black Muslim woman trying to hold his hand in that thread didn't act like a bully at all. Gee. The violent person's need to play the victim when caught is so tiresome.
Thank you for this one. I haven't spoken to my sister or her husband since 2016. Guess why. They are racist. If you ask her though, she would say she isn't.
Can we white women as a group ever be true allies? I see nothing that would make me say yes. White privilege means that we always can opt out if being an “ally” gets too hard. And honestly, we suck as a group at being a true sisterhood for each other. We don’t develop a community or share resources or build support networks. So we’re unprepared when things get so bad that we finally feel the need to act.
We can change this. Look to us queer ones, for we have experience in matters of community. Look to the Jews, who had to create their own community centers. Look to the subcultures, for we are inclusive.
"Jew" does not equate to AIPAC or pro-Israel. Many Jews, especially those closest to the holocaust (survivors, relatives of survivors) protest the genocide, protest the State of Israel. Zionism and Judaism are two separate things. Zionism uses Judaism as its excuse, it uses the holocaust as carte blanche to do whatever it wants. A significant number of Jews recognize this and rebuke it all.
I said Jews and you immediately went to AIPAC. That's antisemitic af. It endangers Jews and does absolutely nothing to free Palestine. I'm not the gross one. Byeeee
I'm actually starting to be more hopeful about more white women recognizing the need for all of us to work together for an equitable society. The extreme destruction of our meager social safety by the Trump Regime is waking some people up, including a friend who has shifted from not caring about our justice system's racially biased application of the law to activism in support of safety net support for all. I had lost touch with her and decade ago and when we reconnected this spring she told me she couldn't believe how clueless she had been before.
There are a lot of white women who think they are safe under white patriarchy, and are currently difficult to reach, but I know it's my responsibility as a white woman to keep trying so I do.
We need to hear this repeated, over and over, until the racists, bigots and other evil-doers are no longer a threat to anyone. I've had enough of this coddling our fellow whites bullshit. If you're not ready to break with someone for espousing their disgusting nature by NOW, then WHEN?
While reading another of your excellent articles professor, my mind kept going back to the times when thousands of our ancestors were lynched, shot and burned alive in front of huge crowds of white people, including their children. The white people in those crowds had family members and friends who knew their names but never testified against them in or out of court. They stayed silent.
They are now photographing themselves in front of the stupid concentration camp in Florida. History repeats. They've been saying "I'll do better" esp since BLM and yet here we are.
Increasing numbers of white allies are starting to get the message that we must be ready to sacrifice our comfort & safety and rely on a new community, thanks to the book clubs teaching us to listen to marginalized folks for a change.
As a 63 y o white woman I was (erroneously) taught that the 1st Amendment gives us white folks the right to believe all the dismissive, cruel & objectively false things we want and not lose any patriotism. It was a license (presented as a Constitutional obligation!) to look away from hate and give it a pass. Now I see that corrosive teaching another way: as incompatible with patriotism, which is love of the *whole* country, which requires *everyone's* access to *all* the Constitutional rights.
The Revolution will not be comfortable, and we won't be able to bring unexamined assumptions with us (gratitude to Dr Patton for making that clear). Patriotism is not the freedom to hate, it's deliberate inclusion and equity. Be proudly patriotic! Reject the idea that "freedom" requires accepting cruelty. Demand a hardy, deep patriotism where we take care of each other, not the mean-spirited, performative, flag pin and pledge of allegiance gruel we oldsters were taught was proper.
Dr Patton, you fired me up this morning. Thank you!
next we're gonna have to break down that very patriotism itself, that love of a constitution that was and is not for the benefit of anyone but white propertied men. take care of each other, yes, but truly taking care of each other requires seeing how the very existence of the US harms people, inherently. this is a settler colony that requires past and present genocide in order to exist. it has no right to exist. the sooner we can get to a place where we are willing to let go of any positive feelings or attachments to this white supremacist settler state, the better
just to clarify and connect back to the essay: I think this is the level where the real fear comes in. I believe in everything i'm saying, and fully teasing out the consequences of it, recognizing what this truth actually demands of us, becomes really scary really quickly. because if we are no longer under illusions about the situation, then we have to seriously think about what going to war actually looks like, and prepare for that. that's where I get paralyzed like Dr. Patton says. it becomes inescapable that it's a life-and-death struggle against an extremely well-resourced, utterly ruthless enemy that is all around us (not to mention within us) and has been consciously preparing for centuries, because this has always been war for them. this is where the individualism baked into white culture really becomes a huge impediment, because we will always feel hopeless against such an enemy without an authentic feeling of community to work from. yet white people have no trouble forming self-serving networks to keep the best job opportunities and other resources... culturally our only basis for "community" has historically been inventing a racialized Other (loosely paraphrasing James Baldwin here). I hope we can instead find ways to build a deeply rooted (though not rooted on this land, where we are colonizers) sense of community that undermines whiteness/pan-European nationalism, e.g., via the responsibilities embodied in the Gaelic concept dúchas (Irish) / dùthchas (Scottish) and other ancestrally appropriate paths
THIS: How can they possibly stand up for Black and brown lives when they can’t even stop their own people from building the machinery of oppression?
As a super-white white person, I ask that the historically marginalized communities continue to have no patience for performative allyship, but allow some space around the "privileged" who are honestly coming to grips with what the system they've unwittingly upheld is actually doing to them. It took me a really long time to realize that my privilege (which I still think was an unuseful word choice) meant I didn't ever wonder if I might get shot when pulled over at a routine traffic stop. My privilege meant I just assumed the bank people were offering me the best deal, instead of assuming they were offering the worst, or would deny my request.
The other key you mentioned was (not verbatim) "wanting credit" for their allyship. This is an artefact of that system of privilege: we (especially females) are programmed to seek approval so early and so deeply that it's a default setting. Not making excuses, but trying to clarify - some of the approval-seekers are truly on the path to understanding that they, too, are fucked. Some of them are just jerks. In any case, thank you for your patience as people who grew up actually knowing you were oppressed by this system.
I hate that accusation of "wanting credit" hurled at people who really are allies. There truly are good anti racists who are told "you are looking for a paternity on the back.
"wanting credit" is somewhat ingrained in white culture, for better or for worse. It's the way we're raised, and it goes hand-in-hand with truly wanting to do good. What I mean is this: We do the thing because we feel it's right. What happens next is telling someone about the good thing we did: and this can be framed funny regardless of how it was intended.
Many of us were raised to know whether we'd done something right by being told we did a good job or being told we needed to do better. So as adults we still want feedback, especially in the unknown territory of fighting for something that doesn't benefit us directly. We really don't know if we did it right - because there isn't a right. But the pattern has been trained in us, so we carry out next-steps the way we always have.
Sometimes the desire to hear we did something right is expressed overtly by people who still don't get the nuances of the original sin. I'm half-convinced that White people will never get the nuances - and this is the point where I beg forgiveness.
Sometimes a (white) person is a covert narcissist, doing the thing to bring praise unto themselves, and they probably aren't cognizant that they're a covert narcissist. I'm also half-convinced that there are way more White covert narcissists than we think. What to do?
Don't sweat it. If you truly meant well, and someone told you they weren't gonna pat you on the back, that sort of comes with the territory. If you did it because you were truly doing good, that hasn't changed. Go do some more good. If someone who's the product of several generations of oppression and abuse doesn't want to thank you, I don't think they have to. That's not why you did it. We're fighting something very, very ugly here. Keep fighting anyway. Take your stripes. That's my super-white perspective.
I have lived in the hood and had the young black kids tell me to my face that they hate White people. They can talk - they have that right. They can spit. Maybe they will find a new perspective later in life, but I'm not going to fight them. And when the elders call me baby as I pass them on the sidewalk, I greet them and inwardly say "thank you."
I somehow clicked a wrong button and lost my previous reply, which explained better. Thanks for taking the time to respond. It means a lot. Maybe I am a misfit, because of my blue eyes I get placed in a slot where I don't feel I fit. That means a ton of assumptions are made about me simply based on the appearance of my eyes.
My mom was from Lithuania, so I inherited her blue eyes, but not everyone truly fits the part just because to some people that individual might look the part to them. I don't totally understand or fit in with white culture myself. I wasn't raised the way you said I was raised. I wasn't raised to "want credit."
I, too, came from multiple generations of trauma and abuse, but I am not supposed to talk about that because I have blue eyes, therefore others try to make it some competition that my trauma isn't as bad as their trauma. (Can I invoke white privilege? Yes, and I use it to help people who cannot.) And no, I am not writing about it because I want a "pat on the back," but because it helps explain my situation. Instead of doing things because I want credit, I do it because my background made me a sympathetic and empathetic person. People judge based on appearance, so therefore no matter what happens, they always end up telling me they aren't going to pat me on the back, even when I didn't ask for that--and then they block me.
If someone doesn't pat me on the back, that's not what I am looking for, but darn it, I wish people would quit blocking me when they think I am getting too close.
Keep in mind that we're talking about generational trauma - it applies to you as well as anyone else. Nobody can tell the victim when to stop hurting. It is awkward and frustrating sometimes. Keep going anyway.
"But many white allies think showing up means posting online, attending a march, or making a donation when it’s popular. They’re used to activism that feels safe, social, even performative, something you can do without real consequences. When the stakes rise, when it means putting bodies on the line, risking arrest, losing jobs, alienating family, forfeiting privilege, or even losing your life—they freeze. Because they were never taught to see themselves as people who might have to fight, suffer, or sacrifice to do what's right."
This is so true. I just wrote a piece on this tipping point. I didn't put myself in the crosshairs last week in Camarillo. To be a true ally in this moment I have to be willing to be risk much, much more. And I'm balking because it's not safe with these armed thugs. But for so many people in the US (and worldwide) it has never been safe. So, I can either keep to the sidelines or step the F up. I appreciate your perspective, Dr. Patton. You cut through the nice and bring the truth. It's refreshing as hell - and motivating.
Super insightful, as usual. Thank you!! I don’t know if it’s because I am gay or because I am in perimenopause and have joined the “We do not care” club, but I’ve been writing off family and friends left and right since this election. I threw my spouses dad out of our car while on vacation for using a racial slur and haven’t spoken to him since. It’s not just ignorance, you are right! It is hate and evil and these people are not redeemable.
The perimenopause of it all really adds a level 😂
Yup. I’m 53 and on Election Day my husband asked his parents if they voted for Trump and when they said yes we cut them out of our lives. I mean it’s ridiculous that they could claim to love their mixed race, gay, neurodivergent, and trans family members and still vote for the ghoul who wants us all dead.
I’m actually shocked at how not sad I am about it. Like I have been expressing my leftist views openly for TWENTY YEARS and they still just don’t get it. My grandfather was the editor of the Harlem edition of the Daily Worker and he had an FBI file as thick as a phonebook. He was at the Highlander Folk School with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. There’s no way I’m gonna live my life in a way that doesn’t honor him.
My late father was a cash only, no social media guy who I thought was just overly paranoid. Turns out he was right about EVERYTHING.
When I met and married my husband he was a jazz musician in NYC. I knew his parents were kind of redneck-y but I figured we could all still get along. And we did as long as I dumbed myself down and faked admiration for their corny ways and bit my tongue year after year about politics and religion. Kind of refreshing to not have to do that anymore.
Yup. Left a 20 year marriage and escaped to a blue state with my YA kiddo before the election. Basically lost 90% of the "friends" I had because they sit around clutching their pearls about how bad everything has become but do NOTHING to change it. I have energy to actually effect some change where I am now because I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder in fear and there are enough like minded people to work with and actually achieve anything. Saying what I really think instead of breaking my brain trying to communicate with white Southerners who are never direct about ANYTHING. I'm post menopausal and queer and in my IDGAF era,
I'm also a member of the "I don't care" & I'm pretty sure that all my family members that were on the MAGA path have all died in the last 5 years (😂😂😂Stop! That's not nice!) My father in law was one of the bigoted people I've ever met - but because he knew he was very lucky to be a grandfather & didn't want to lose his opportunity to see his grandchildren, he watched his mouth. 😈
I have relatives who are MAGA who are younger than me. I have been working to keep communication open with them for the past 8 years based on Timothy Snyder's recommendations in "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century", but had to take a break this spring after repeatedly being drawn into circular arguments when I tried to alert them to the Trump Regime's dismantling of services they support.
Hey now!!! Wdnc here! I’m a member of the NY chapter. LOL! I cut off my dad and many other family and friends. I’m talking an entire community - they allowed room for MAGA. It wasn’t the hardest thing to do either. Values are what you make them. Just cause my family decided to become cultists didn’t mean I had to. I don’t even recognize them anymore. Living as though these people have died is a challenge. I tell my children the truth and that isn’t hard to do either but it hurts. In the years since I cut them off I have made a new family of people I have met who have done the exact same thing, cutting out their family. We do not care if we are family, there is no room for MAGA, we do not care.
I’m way past menopause but I joined the We Do Not Care club too— I have chronic pain issues so it speaks to me!
Only if they stop insisting they are a race that doesn’t exist. As long as they and others insist on keeping up the illusion of race, the evil of racism is not going anywhere. It starts with them smashing their own ignorant delusions about themselves, only then can real progress be made on reaching equality and ensuring justice.
This is key. That’s why our ministry produced this resource: www.lieofehiteness.com
https://www.lieofwhiteness.com/
Hotep negroes have plenty of delusions 😆
Yeah, almost like racecraft is stupid as fuck regardlessly of who's doing it
Racecraft? I assume you are referring to the people who started this shit.
Topic of a good book by the Fields sisters. Works like witchcraft.
Topic of a good book by the Fields sisters. Works like witchcraft.
Reading this made me squirm uncomfortably. I have a lot of soul searching to do, clearly. This essay feels spot-on to me. That has to mean I see myself in it. And yes, I’m scared.
You're right. The white people who are so horrified have turned a blind eye to the fact that this is how marginalized people have been treated always. The usa has never been great. Thank you. I am learning so much from you.
Every time I see a post on social media talking about "this isn't us" or "this isn't the US", I just sadly shake my head because it IS. It's always been this. It just hasn't been so blatant & in your face in the recent past. And that's the power of whitewashing history.
Right? I keep telling them all to read history, to put themselves in the shoes of literally anyone other than their ancestors throughout our existence. The US is and has always been the bad guys. We are the villains of this era of human history, and only our willful ignorance allowed it to continue.
That's part of the joy of privilege. For my part, I was too wrapped up in my own struggles for a lot of my life to look below the bullshit (and I knew it was bullshit) I was taught in school. When I did start re-learning, I was way more than dismayed. Because the information isn't hidden. It's all over the internet & in books. The problem is that people, white people, need to be willing to be really fucking uncomfortable. I've come across things that the government & media has fed me over the years that I took for truth & I felt so ashamed for believing it. And angry. So unbelievably angry.
I had no Internet until I was well into my thirties, but not long after, I started discovering the lies and whitewashing, and yes. I was extremely angry. I'd always deeply valued education and discovering that the people responsible for mine were deceiving me the entire time was a brutal betrayal.
And talking to my family was an exercise in futility, not that I didn't try. Once Trump entered the race in 2016, I went no contact with most of them, and with the last of them in 2022. They disgust me so much that I'd be changing my name if I had the money to do so.
I get blocked regularly when I make this point.
That's a shame. But I get it. Liberals don't want the accompanying guilt that comes with the realization that they should've been angry this whole time & only are now that the system is coming for them. It was a tough realization for me.
My mother stopped talking to me 3 years ago because of my anti racism and liberal bullshit. Her words. She did me a favor. The level of hate in that woman is scary
My racist uncle blocked *me* over a decade ago because he came on my page with some racist Islamophobic shit. My friends gently tried to call him in. He told my parents the liberal university had brainwashed me and all my friends were bullies. Weird, because he would have gotten the same response before college. Weird, because he was the aggressor. Weird, because the Black Muslim woman trying to hold his hand in that thread didn't act like a bully at all. Gee. The violent person's need to play the victim when caught is so tiresome.
Thank you for this one. I haven't spoken to my sister or her husband since 2016. Guess why. They are racist. If you ask her though, she would say she isn't.
Yes, all of this.
Can we white women as a group ever be true allies? I see nothing that would make me say yes. White privilege means that we always can opt out if being an “ally” gets too hard. And honestly, we suck as a group at being a true sisterhood for each other. We don’t develop a community or share resources or build support networks. So we’re unprepared when things get so bad that we finally feel the need to act.
We can change this. Look to us queer ones, for we have experience in matters of community. Look to the Jews, who had to create their own community centers. Look to the subcultures, for we are inclusive.
Seriously? Your statement is gross.
How so?
AIPAC.
"Jew" does not equate to AIPAC or pro-Israel. Many Jews, especially those closest to the holocaust (survivors, relatives of survivors) protest the genocide, protest the State of Israel. Zionism and Judaism are two separate things. Zionism uses Judaism as its excuse, it uses the holocaust as carte blanche to do whatever it wants. A significant number of Jews recognize this and rebuke it all.
I said Jews and you immediately went to AIPAC. That's antisemitic af. It endangers Jews and does absolutely nothing to free Palestine. I'm not the gross one. Byeeee
That is fragile. You doubled down on victimhood. Your silence is deafening and gross.
I'm actually starting to be more hopeful about more white women recognizing the need for all of us to work together for an equitable society. The extreme destruction of our meager social safety by the Trump Regime is waking some people up, including a friend who has shifted from not caring about our justice system's racially biased application of the law to activism in support of safety net support for all. I had lost touch with her and decade ago and when we reconnected this spring she told me she couldn't believe how clueless she had been before.
There are a lot of white women who think they are safe under white patriarchy, and are currently difficult to reach, but I know it's my responsibility as a white woman to keep trying so I do.
The grand collective facade was destined to disintegrate, and once that curtain fell there would be nowhere for anyone to hide.
We need to hear this repeated, over and over, until the racists, bigots and other evil-doers are no longer a threat to anyone. I've had enough of this coddling our fellow whites bullshit. If you're not ready to break with someone for espousing their disgusting nature by NOW, then WHEN?
While reading another of your excellent articles professor, my mind kept going back to the times when thousands of our ancestors were lynched, shot and burned alive in front of huge crowds of white people, including their children. The white people in those crowds had family members and friends who knew their names but never testified against them in or out of court. They stayed silent.
They are now photographing themselves in front of the stupid concentration camp in Florida. History repeats. They've been saying "I'll do better" esp since BLM and yet here we are.
In my limited experience, the white people who glorify the Trump Regime are not the same white people who support Black Lives Matter.
Increasing numbers of white allies are starting to get the message that we must be ready to sacrifice our comfort & safety and rely on a new community, thanks to the book clubs teaching us to listen to marginalized folks for a change.
As a 63 y o white woman I was (erroneously) taught that the 1st Amendment gives us white folks the right to believe all the dismissive, cruel & objectively false things we want and not lose any patriotism. It was a license (presented as a Constitutional obligation!) to look away from hate and give it a pass. Now I see that corrosive teaching another way: as incompatible with patriotism, which is love of the *whole* country, which requires *everyone's* access to *all* the Constitutional rights.
The Revolution will not be comfortable, and we won't be able to bring unexamined assumptions with us (gratitude to Dr Patton for making that clear). Patriotism is not the freedom to hate, it's deliberate inclusion and equity. Be proudly patriotic! Reject the idea that "freedom" requires accepting cruelty. Demand a hardy, deep patriotism where we take care of each other, not the mean-spirited, performative, flag pin and pledge of allegiance gruel we oldsters were taught was proper.
Dr Patton, you fired me up this morning. Thank you!
next we're gonna have to break down that very patriotism itself, that love of a constitution that was and is not for the benefit of anyone but white propertied men. take care of each other, yes, but truly taking care of each other requires seeing how the very existence of the US harms people, inherently. this is a settler colony that requires past and present genocide in order to exist. it has no right to exist. the sooner we can get to a place where we are willing to let go of any positive feelings or attachments to this white supremacist settler state, the better
just to clarify and connect back to the essay: I think this is the level where the real fear comes in. I believe in everything i'm saying, and fully teasing out the consequences of it, recognizing what this truth actually demands of us, becomes really scary really quickly. because if we are no longer under illusions about the situation, then we have to seriously think about what going to war actually looks like, and prepare for that. that's where I get paralyzed like Dr. Patton says. it becomes inescapable that it's a life-and-death struggle against an extremely well-resourced, utterly ruthless enemy that is all around us (not to mention within us) and has been consciously preparing for centuries, because this has always been war for them. this is where the individualism baked into white culture really becomes a huge impediment, because we will always feel hopeless against such an enemy without an authentic feeling of community to work from. yet white people have no trouble forming self-serving networks to keep the best job opportunities and other resources... culturally our only basis for "community" has historically been inventing a racialized Other (loosely paraphrasing James Baldwin here). I hope we can instead find ways to build a deeply rooted (though not rooted on this land, where we are colonizers) sense of community that undermines whiteness/pan-European nationalism, e.g., via the responsibilities embodied in the Gaelic concept dúchas (Irish) / dùthchas (Scottish) and other ancestrally appropriate paths
This resonates, and is, indeed, frightening. But looking truth in the face is the only appropriate action, I think.
THIS: How can they possibly stand up for Black and brown lives when they can’t even stop their own people from building the machinery of oppression?
As a super-white white person, I ask that the historically marginalized communities continue to have no patience for performative allyship, but allow some space around the "privileged" who are honestly coming to grips with what the system they've unwittingly upheld is actually doing to them. It took me a really long time to realize that my privilege (which I still think was an unuseful word choice) meant I didn't ever wonder if I might get shot when pulled over at a routine traffic stop. My privilege meant I just assumed the bank people were offering me the best deal, instead of assuming they were offering the worst, or would deny my request.
The other key you mentioned was (not verbatim) "wanting credit" for their allyship. This is an artefact of that system of privilege: we (especially females) are programmed to seek approval so early and so deeply that it's a default setting. Not making excuses, but trying to clarify - some of the approval-seekers are truly on the path to understanding that they, too, are fucked. Some of them are just jerks. In any case, thank you for your patience as people who grew up actually knowing you were oppressed by this system.
I hate that accusation of "wanting credit" hurled at people who really are allies. There truly are good anti racists who are told "you are looking for a paternity on the back.
"wanting credit" is somewhat ingrained in white culture, for better or for worse. It's the way we're raised, and it goes hand-in-hand with truly wanting to do good. What I mean is this: We do the thing because we feel it's right. What happens next is telling someone about the good thing we did: and this can be framed funny regardless of how it was intended.
Many of us were raised to know whether we'd done something right by being told we did a good job or being told we needed to do better. So as adults we still want feedback, especially in the unknown territory of fighting for something that doesn't benefit us directly. We really don't know if we did it right - because there isn't a right. But the pattern has been trained in us, so we carry out next-steps the way we always have.
Sometimes the desire to hear we did something right is expressed overtly by people who still don't get the nuances of the original sin. I'm half-convinced that White people will never get the nuances - and this is the point where I beg forgiveness.
Sometimes a (white) person is a covert narcissist, doing the thing to bring praise unto themselves, and they probably aren't cognizant that they're a covert narcissist. I'm also half-convinced that there are way more White covert narcissists than we think. What to do?
Don't sweat it. If you truly meant well, and someone told you they weren't gonna pat you on the back, that sort of comes with the territory. If you did it because you were truly doing good, that hasn't changed. Go do some more good. If someone who's the product of several generations of oppression and abuse doesn't want to thank you, I don't think they have to. That's not why you did it. We're fighting something very, very ugly here. Keep fighting anyway. Take your stripes. That's my super-white perspective.
I have lived in the hood and had the young black kids tell me to my face that they hate White people. They can talk - they have that right. They can spit. Maybe they will find a new perspective later in life, but I'm not going to fight them. And when the elders call me baby as I pass them on the sidewalk, I greet them and inwardly say "thank you."
I somehow clicked a wrong button and lost my previous reply, which explained better. Thanks for taking the time to respond. It means a lot. Maybe I am a misfit, because of my blue eyes I get placed in a slot where I don't feel I fit. That means a ton of assumptions are made about me simply based on the appearance of my eyes.
My mom was from Lithuania, so I inherited her blue eyes, but not everyone truly fits the part just because to some people that individual might look the part to them. I don't totally understand or fit in with white culture myself. I wasn't raised the way you said I was raised. I wasn't raised to "want credit."
I, too, came from multiple generations of trauma and abuse, but I am not supposed to talk about that because I have blue eyes, therefore others try to make it some competition that my trauma isn't as bad as their trauma. (Can I invoke white privilege? Yes, and I use it to help people who cannot.) And no, I am not writing about it because I want a "pat on the back," but because it helps explain my situation. Instead of doing things because I want credit, I do it because my background made me a sympathetic and empathetic person. People judge based on appearance, so therefore no matter what happens, they always end up telling me they aren't going to pat me on the back, even when I didn't ask for that--and then they block me.
If someone doesn't pat me on the back, that's not what I am looking for, but darn it, I wish people would quit blocking me when they think I am getting too close.
Keep in mind that we're talking about generational trauma - it applies to you as well as anyone else. Nobody can tell the victim when to stop hurting. It is awkward and frustrating sometimes. Keep going anyway.
"But many white allies think showing up means posting online, attending a march, or making a donation when it’s popular. They’re used to activism that feels safe, social, even performative, something you can do without real consequences. When the stakes rise, when it means putting bodies on the line, risking arrest, losing jobs, alienating family, forfeiting privilege, or even losing your life—they freeze. Because they were never taught to see themselves as people who might have to fight, suffer, or sacrifice to do what's right."
This is so true. I just wrote a piece on this tipping point. I didn't put myself in the crosshairs last week in Camarillo. To be a true ally in this moment I have to be willing to be risk much, much more. And I'm balking because it's not safe with these armed thugs. But for so many people in the US (and worldwide) it has never been safe. So, I can either keep to the sidelines or step the F up. I appreciate your perspective, Dr. Patton. You cut through the nice and bring the truth. It's refreshing as hell - and motivating.
Tonight there is an online training for (white) folks who want to organize and change: https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/803953/
This was an uncomfortable but important thing for me to read. Thank you, Stacey.
This entire piece is full of truth. I will be repeating this idea in particular to everyone I know.
“Watching people with so much power, access, and cultural sway squander it, or pretend they’re powerless, is exhausting.”
Great read as always Dr. Patton