A Tweet:
Dear people racialized as White:
When y'all say it's not a race thing, you've made it a race thing by rendering your racialized experiences invisible, which is indicative of how the race thing works. - - Deadric T. Williams, @doc_thoughts
Last night I removed someone’s ability to comment on the blog. I do that very rarely. Generally it is for one of two reasons:
1. They verbally attack others who are commenting.
2. They verbally attack my family.
Yesterday’s commenter chose to go down the road of claiming that something wasn’t racism because they, a white person, said it wasn’t. This is just not going to fly with me, and I said as much. Their response was to persist at length and to become more belligerent.
Friends, I am willing to discuss a lot of things in the comments and I try mightily to make it a space where people can express more than one point of view. But I am not obliged to make space for white people attempting to control definitions of racism. I reject that.
This is not because I think I know everything about racism. Absolutely not. It’s because I am clear that the place to look for wisdom on this topic is the Black people who have experienced it. Period.
I’m going to share this quote again:
The overwhelming majority of racism happens unintentionally, without white people’s knowledge. Racism is so engrained into our society’s infrastructure—indeed, at our nation’s social and economic foundation—white folks’ actions are often racist accidentally, even automatically. - - Johnathan Perkins, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, UCLA
So, in case there was any confusion about this - - I’m clearly articulating it today. Village Green/Town² is not obligated to provide a platform for white people who insist on defining what racism is or who attempt to control conversations about race at the expense of Black people.
We have plenty of other things to talk about here.
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