Why do I lack the ability to trust white people who claim to be progressive or leftist?
When a person of color, especially if they're black like me, affirms their support for causes such as queer liberation, feminism, animal rights, or socialism, I immediately feel that I can believe, with minimal doubt, that they're truly convicted and principled in what they're advocating for.
However, when a white person claims to support leftism, until my skepticism is proven wrong, I immediately assume they're a dishonest and performative libshit. I then proceed to interact with them with hefty amounts of caution. If my assumptions are proven true, I'm never shocked.
We're not talking about keeping wreckers out, we're at "I don't trust a white person unless they have a biracial kid, and even then maybe not." There has never been a sizable leftist movement in the U.S. with that kind of thinking. I don't see any realistic path to one with that approach, either. I don't know of any AES state (Cuba is probably the most relevant example to the U.S.) that has addressed racism and discrimination in a similar fashion.
I don't know how we can read Gerald Horne and have 100 threads about how racial categories were invented to keep poor people at each other's throats and then just do exactly that. I don't know how we can nod along to Engles on pre-patriarchical family structures or Graeber on pre-capitalist economies then think whatever we're doing in this thread is revolutionary.
If White people collectively want trust, they can show and prove that they deserve it. Til then, the very idea that a lasting accord can be found in the plantation empire is honestly kinda laughable to me; and informs my research into valid presentations of Black Nationalism (we don't do that Black Hebrew or NFAC shit here). There is still a bill 400 years long that hasn't even started to be paid back yet, and frankly, I've lost the faith that it even will be paid back without organized and disciplined formation.
I think people (myself included tbf im not going to act all high and mighty about this) are insecure about the idea that they’re ontologically evil because they’re white. Idk
Edit: it does seem like a toxic and silly thing to be insecure about. No one owes us trust.
I would hope people are uncomfortable with being labeled ontologically evil purely on the basis of their skin color; that's a ridiculous notion that is not remotely leftist.
Well, the thing is that no one is saying we’re ontologically evil. It’s just something people ASSUME they’re saying because they say they don’t trust us. It’s understandable to feel hurt but it doesn’t mean you’re ontologically evil if someone can’t afford to trust you
I never understood the liberal mainlining of the discussion of intersectionality, either. Shorn of any class intersection (which is just NPR-style liberalism), yeah, you’re going to have a lot of pissed off non-s (and liberal white women who’ve “swung their Guuci-booted feet over the wall of oppression” like Bill Burr says).
But because of the power and privilege inherent in whiteness you now have white people almost 10 years later deploying that power in very fashy ways and you have the reactionaries now claiming they’re the party of the working class (which is bullshit, but it’ll play). And it’s totally understandable from a chud viewpoint because your options are or but one of them is calling you a KKKracker who benefited from racism (even though you did but you live in a trailer, so it doesn’t feel that way) and the other is saying “yeah, this shit sucks. Let’s vent it onto someone lower on our fucked up hierarchy” which just perpetuates all this shit.
All of this is because of intersectionality shorn of class, imo. Even this thread.
Anyway, I bought this book because I listen to a lot of NPR and it seems right lol. Haven’t read it, so feel free to me or give me your reviews, if you’ve read it: