Monday 11 March 2013

Why it sometimes sucks to be some people's ally...


As a person with privilege in one area, namely race, I do my best to be an ally to people of color, I try not to tone police, I do remember that people of color have a right to be angry and that I'm really lucky that I don't have to deal with racism. I don't always get it right, but I try to learn from my mistakes and fail less in future.

However?

It still hurts when a person of color says that my skin color makes me manipulative, an awful evil person by default or similar because they're saying that all white people are like that.

It still hurts when I have the living daylights beaten out of me because a rich able bodied straight cis gendered male of color decides my impoverished disabled bisexual gender queer seen as female white ass is a safe target for his anger over racism.

I'm still scared when a able bodied cis gendered straight male of color threatens me with violence because of my race and because he knows his male cis privilege means he'll get away with it.

I get it, the people who do this? They're angry at the world's bigotry and they're lashing out. I don't blame them for being angry. But I am sick of what is a small but loud group of minorities who insist on justifying what is basically shitting all over people with "but I'm oppressed". So am I, it's a reason to be angry, it's not a license that allows you to do everything you want to do to others.

I'm not arguing for anyone to be nice to majority people or to tone down your anger at isms. Just that there are days when I do get tired of it being basically shat all over especially given that often when I need allies, those same people are either part of the reason I need them or tone policing the fuck out of me, and yet they'll probably got fucking ballistic over this post.

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