For a long time I have been thinking about this question, "what can I do, as a liberal white woman, to dismantle the systems of racial oppression and injustice what I have upheld for so long?" The answer (for now, it will evolve) is to have the hard conversations with my white, liberal, well-intentioned but ultimately complicit friends about their part. This is the first step, to be transparent and honest about how we got here and confront the scratchy, difficult feelings it brings up. Are white women capable of turning this ship around? Yes. Will they? Shrug. I have had some hard conversations with family and friends already this year because we just aren't moving in the direction we need to move in, and you're right, the GOP is covered in blood and loathing. How do we even fight that?
As ever, your writing asks the good questions, brings up the important feelings, and persists in the righteous fight. That makes me hopeful.
Among the many things I like about this article, I really appreciate your including here how the fascist party is trying to eliminate trans people. There are so many transphobes on Substack, every time I find a new author I can’t help but brace for the worst. But this was a breath of fresh air! I really hope your article gets white, cis people thinking about the need for a politics of action—of action every day—against this heinous political complacency in white supremacist ideology. I also hope your work will get more white trans people to think about the conjunction between white supremacist and transphobic politics (and for anyone reading this who’s interested in that topic, I so highly recommend the respective writings of C. Riley Snorton and Deborah Miranda). Electoral politics alone are totally insufficient!
I had Easter dinner with family yesterday and I just now read your chapter on your first white people Sunday dinner (during a school board meeting... 😬) and other than the typical white people food, two things were said to me... “not everything is about race” and “I don’t see color.” 😳 Dayum, if you didn’t call it! And you probably guessed dinner was at a liberal house...
But the worst is when family who I expect would be open to discussion on recent events sorta... crack from “exhaustion” (or maybe just exasperation with me, I can be a lot) start saying things about common ground and benefit of the doubt and I should keep an open mind ... about people who want to see those not like them ... unalive... but they just vote Republican. Ummm... no... makes you wonder how long they wore their mask that grins and lies...
10+ years of yelling matches over the dinner table and not a mind has changed in that time. I won’t stop bringing up the racial equalities our nation propagates, but it often feels like a losing battle when you’re the lone Democrat in a room full of old, stuck-in-their-ways Republicans. Still, it’s a battle worth fighting!
Thank you for your writings; you drive your message home with eloquence and powerful language.
I am a registered Democrat, yet am disgusted with what this party is. I can’t say that I’m disgusted with what it has become because I believe it has always been this way. I don’t feel heard or seen by the Democratic party. It is also filled with racists who veil their racism by having token friends of color or shaking their ass to Aretha at a wedding, but even Democrats of varying shades of brown are greedy and pander to their own bias. This country needs a fresh new party and fresh new way of governing. I’m not smart enough or young enough to birth it, but you may be.
"These people have a peculiar kind of inability to care, one that allows the architects of hate to fashion a world corroded by fear and division..." When I read this, I reflected on my own insights that correspond to the study are known as Economics. The most salient, concise, and graspable cause for the emergence of a democratic, fair, or prosperous Western Europe (or, alternatively, US) is capitalism but we have understood capitalism all wrong. Capitalism is the preference of trade over war. Capitalism is allowing everyone to participate, either as customers or businesspersons. Capitalism is fluid and it does not indicate a further evolution of class. In capitalism the individual voluntarily decides whether to buy a product or not to, even whether to participate in capitalism or not to. There have been persons who declined to participate, or families in which only one person makes the money, and that is enough to support the other members. While capitalism is doing these creative things, there are those who lie, cheat, steal, etc. Under capitalism, the "liberal" political alternative flourishes. There was never any socialism, until capitalism made its advance. It was under capitalism that all the great books of the 19th and 20th century were written. But, unregulated and unguided, capitalism results in global warming and social disaster. What exists today can hardly be called capitalism, or even economics.
The West pulled out ahead when it developed capitalism. The world comes to a catastrophic end when we refuse to discipline (regulate) it.
For a long time I have been thinking about this question, "what can I do, as a liberal white woman, to dismantle the systems of racial oppression and injustice what I have upheld for so long?" The answer (for now, it will evolve) is to have the hard conversations with my white, liberal, well-intentioned but ultimately complicit friends about their part. This is the first step, to be transparent and honest about how we got here and confront the scratchy, difficult feelings it brings up. Are white women capable of turning this ship around? Yes. Will they? Shrug. I have had some hard conversations with family and friends already this year because we just aren't moving in the direction we need to move in, and you're right, the GOP is covered in blood and loathing. How do we even fight that?
As ever, your writing asks the good questions, brings up the important feelings, and persists in the righteous fight. That makes me hopeful.
Your words quite literally give me chills and that’s always what phones home what a powerful writer you are when I read your work. Excellent
Among the many things I like about this article, I really appreciate your including here how the fascist party is trying to eliminate trans people. There are so many transphobes on Substack, every time I find a new author I can’t help but brace for the worst. But this was a breath of fresh air! I really hope your article gets white, cis people thinking about the need for a politics of action—of action every day—against this heinous political complacency in white supremacist ideology. I also hope your work will get more white trans people to think about the conjunction between white supremacist and transphobic politics (and for anyone reading this who’s interested in that topic, I so highly recommend the respective writings of C. Riley Snorton and Deborah Miranda). Electoral politics alone are totally insufficient!
I had Easter dinner with family yesterday and I just now read your chapter on your first white people Sunday dinner (during a school board meeting... 😬) and other than the typical white people food, two things were said to me... “not everything is about race” and “I don’t see color.” 😳 Dayum, if you didn’t call it! And you probably guessed dinner was at a liberal house...
But the worst is when family who I expect would be open to discussion on recent events sorta... crack from “exhaustion” (or maybe just exasperation with me, I can be a lot) start saying things about common ground and benefit of the doubt and I should keep an open mind ... about people who want to see those not like them ... unalive... but they just vote Republican. Ummm... no... makes you wonder how long they wore their mask that grins and lies...
10+ years of yelling matches over the dinner table and not a mind has changed in that time. I won’t stop bringing up the racial equalities our nation propagates, but it often feels like a losing battle when you’re the lone Democrat in a room full of old, stuck-in-their-ways Republicans. Still, it’s a battle worth fighting!
Thank you for your writings; you drive your message home with eloquence and powerful language.
I am a registered Democrat, yet am disgusted with what this party is. I can’t say that I’m disgusted with what it has become because I believe it has always been this way. I don’t feel heard or seen by the Democratic party. It is also filled with racists who veil their racism by having token friends of color or shaking their ass to Aretha at a wedding, but even Democrats of varying shades of brown are greedy and pander to their own bias. This country needs a fresh new party and fresh new way of governing. I’m not smart enough or young enough to birth it, but you may be.
"These people have a peculiar kind of inability to care, one that allows the architects of hate to fashion a world corroded by fear and division..." When I read this, I reflected on my own insights that correspond to the study are known as Economics. The most salient, concise, and graspable cause for the emergence of a democratic, fair, or prosperous Western Europe (or, alternatively, US) is capitalism but we have understood capitalism all wrong. Capitalism is the preference of trade over war. Capitalism is allowing everyone to participate, either as customers or businesspersons. Capitalism is fluid and it does not indicate a further evolution of class. In capitalism the individual voluntarily decides whether to buy a product or not to, even whether to participate in capitalism or not to. There have been persons who declined to participate, or families in which only one person makes the money, and that is enough to support the other members. While capitalism is doing these creative things, there are those who lie, cheat, steal, etc. Under capitalism, the "liberal" political alternative flourishes. There was never any socialism, until capitalism made its advance. It was under capitalism that all the great books of the 19th and 20th century were written. But, unregulated and unguided, capitalism results in global warming and social disaster. What exists today can hardly be called capitalism, or even economics.
The West pulled out ahead when it developed capitalism. The world comes to a catastrophic end when we refuse to discipline (regulate) it.