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In 2014 we lived in a white, suburban community. My daughter @AlexandriaV2005 attended a majority white elementary school. That school year, I discussed the systemic racism I saw in my daughter's school with another white mom. She then reported me to the principal -
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2/The next day, I recieved an angry call from my daughter's principal demanding to know why I called her school racist. I calmly detailed my perspectives, to which she disagreed and said I was wrong. We ended the call calmly, though I didn't capitulate.
3/The next few days word spread of my "beliefs". Women - white moms - stopped talking to me. My daughter was "disinvited" to friends homes. I was branded the white mom that called the school racist. The white fragility of the community was stunning.
4/Eventually, we left the school, then moved out of the community. I have NO friends back there. So that folks, is also what we need to be discussing with the #AmyCooper incident. White women patrol other white women and reinforce each others racism.
5/ #AmyCopper didn't act in a vacuum. If she were a white woman who calls out racial injustice instead of perpetuating it, she knows she could lose everything she enjoys - friends, community, jobs, opportunities - because other white women would ostracize her.
6/I guarantee #AmyCooper has a posse, maybe a mean girl group, but definitely a structure where she's required to be racist to fit in. For change to happen, white women have to be willing to lose everything. They have to understand that their "losses" are inconsequential -
7/to the injustice and violence experienced by people of color.
Someone asked if the principal was a white woman too - yes, yes she was.
