I said this in his diary, but I didn’t see his diary until this morning so I decided to say this separately.
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Dear White Allies:
So this is what you need to understand and hear me now. Seriously.
Some of you view BLM from a point of white privilege. You can choose to move in and out of spaces without little to no consequences and you will always be afforded the benefit of doubt.
Yes. White people need to fix this racism thing. With other white people. That’s what you can and should do.
What you cannot do is to dictate, appropriate, or re-gentrify black folks’ movements.
Yes. There were black kids who were looting and stealing stuff as what typically happens with respect to crimes of opportunity and let’s also be very clear — white folk do this same shyt too.
But I have seen a prolifera of video from the past 48 hrs clearly showing young (and not so young) white people breaking business windows, setting police cars on fire and 2 videos where white people were trying to KILL protestors — and in both of those cases, the media, including TMZ, misrepresented what happened because the individuals lied about what happened.
This is not a game.
This is life and death for black people, period.
This is not about white kids driving around in their cars blasting black hip hop or wearing clothing of the culture — They see these marches and they are excited to participate, but then they get to go home and do other things when they tire of that.
We die.
You want to be an ally? Then trust US to know what WE.ARE.DOING.
Back US up. Don’t overrun us.
And most importantly — use your influence to stand up to the folk who look like you who embrace, promote and actively work to keep in place institutionalized and systematic racism.
Stop tolerating it because you are friends with them when it comes to other things in your life or it’s your uncle who is old and set in his ways.
Stop equating systematic and institutionalized racism with economic inequalities as if fixing the economy will fix racism. The Mayor of St Paul comes from a long line of police officers including his father and he was still stopped and frisked by police during his youth. Black folk of financial means don’t get to take off the color of their skin.
Ask the residents of Tulsa, OK who 99 years ago today, saw their whole community burned to the ground and lives lost because their community had the audacity to be vibrant and more financially prosperous than many white ones back in that day.
This is truth: The United States of America has a decision to make. The whole future of this country depends on making the right one. This country must openly acknowledge its painful history of the oppression of indigenous people in taking over the land, the history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the post Civil War federal government actions that were designed to keep in place — up to this very day — an unequal and unjust system.
We can no longer pretend that things are better — that is an illusion — it only appears to be so because we continue to sweep the real dirt under the rug.
Well the rug has been ripped back and now either we clean this up once and for all, or hope that the now torn and tattered rug can continue to cover it up. (Hint: It cannot any longer).
The choice is up to you all.