Stop this shit right now.
Stop telling us to have empathy for Trump voters. Period. End of discussion. Y’all need to collect your damn people instead of telling people like me who have to fear every day about whether today is the day Trumpism fucks me over to have “empathy”.
It’s been 2 years and 4 months since Trump was inaugurated, and y’all are still making excuses for his voters.
We know none of this is about economic anxiety.
And yet we STILL have takes like this from “good progressives”. We STILL have people trying to argue that Trump voters aren’t sexist or racist or queerphobic, even as he has a 90% approval rating with the Republicans doing just what he said he would do and more. We STILL have our political media and some of our political candidates ignoring PoC and women to chase racist white people. But what we DON’T have, or at least what we don’t have enough of, is good white people holding the racists in their life accountable.
Y’all still talk to them.
Y’all still work with them.
Y’all still date them.
Y’all still marry them.
Y’all still have kids with them.
But worst of all, when you stop doing these things, you did it before you held them accountable, not after, you cut THEM off so it stopped being your problem.
We have creeping fascism. We have kids in cages on the border and kids without power in Puerto Rico.
We have all the horrors of Trumpism, we have people suffering and dying both here and worldwide because of white racism. So what are you doing to challenge white racism in your community? What are you doing to push back against the racist and sexist media that is boosting White men over qualified women and POC?
And the reason why I’m calling White people out is because we didn’t start this fire, yall did.
It’s white racism that fuels inhumane border policy. It’s white racism that gets Black kids shot for being Black. It’s white racism that makes passing social democratic policy impossible as white people prioritize their racial interest over their nominal class interest.
It’s white supremacy that is killing the planet. Because it is white voters that systematically vote AGAINST climate change mitigation, because mitigating climate change requires that white people use some of their vast accumulated wealth and capital that they gained through a white supremacist capitalist system to do so.
It is white people that are the drivers of anti-LGBTQ bigotry. While PoC communities struggle with LGBTQ acceptance internally, *nationally* it’s not us, it’s yall. We didn’t vote in the haters.
And white racism is everywhere, and don’t pretend you don’t see it. It’s your momma, it’s your daddy, it’s your uncle, it’s your work buddies. So if you’re not challenging it everywhere you see it, you are not my ally, let alone my accomplice. If you are telling me that I have to find “common ground” with these people then you are actually my adversary, collaborating in my own oppression.
It’s not our job to fix this. And white racists won’t listen to us anyway. It's the white “progressives” who need to take the lead in the only thing they can do for the struggle better than PoC — reach their fellow white people.
And last note — if this ain’t about you, don’t come in here talking like it IS about you. Because if you are doing the right thing as a White person, you don’t need to say shit to prove it or defend yourself.