Read on Twitter
I am going to start a very long, overdue thread. Hopefully, I will keep my rambling limited. I’ll be going back and forth between my phone and my computer, so my flow might be a little off. I was to start by saying I do have permission from Marian to use the screenshots, but I+
+am not tagging her, because she does not need to get any notifications about this, we’ve already discussed that as well. Almost a month ago(and we’ll get to why it took so long for me to get to this later in the thread.) I jumped into a conversation that Marian was having with+
+a couple of other people. This is where I jumped in.
After I jumped in, Marian asked me this question, and you can see how I responded. You can also see what Marian asked me after I responded+
Now, I am going to be very honest, and this is the part that is very important for white people to hear and think about. When Marian asked me that question, I felt caught, on the spot, right away all sorts of excuses were spinning through my head, because I had not given my+
+girls and explicit talk about how to protect Black friends, and my initial instinct was to ramble off all sorts of excuses to Marian, like, "my girls haven& #39;t had any Black friends, we lived in a town with just 2700 people, there never were times where the police just showed up,+
+etc, etc, etc. Just excuse after excuse after excuse. Now, I have a long, long ways to go when it comes to being any sort of ally, but if there is one thing I have learned is that white people do not need to share all of their excuses with POCs, because #1 that is not POCs+
+problem or concern, POCs have lived with the excuses from white people for hundreds and and hundreds of years, they do not need to hear all of our "Yeah, but..." +
+So, with knowing at least that. This is how I replied back.+
+and this is one of the main points I want white people that read this thread to understand. It is so important to not ramble on our excuses when it comes to having conversations about race and racism with POCs, we need to just answer the questions honestly, and listen to what+
+is shared with us. Because it is from that listening, and not reacting, becoming defensive, where we can really learn and begin to make the changes we need to make. Because we have a lot of changes we need to make. A lot. Now something else happened in this conversation that is+
+another important piece that white people need to pay attention to. During this conversation, a real, true, ally for Marian jumped in on the conversation.+
+Teresa joined in on the conversation.(going to jump back on the computer to write more...)
+Teresa is an excellent example of what a real ally looks like and does. Because that is another thing I have most definitely learned is that it is not Marian& #39;s job to educate me, to "show me the way." As Teresa said in one of her tweets, this is not Marian& #39;s burden, she told+
+Marian she is happy to take it on, to tag her if necessary. This is what more of us white people need to be doing here on Twitter (myself very much included in that group). If we see a conversation where people are putting a burden on POCs, asking them for book lists, lesson+
+ideas, etc, we need to jump in, respond, answer the questions, share the resources, take the burden off of our Black friends, because they have enough burdens on their shoulders as is. There was more Marian shared in that Twitter conversation that once again reminded me of just+
+how enormous that burden is. Now going along with that burden I want to go back to how this conversation happened almost a month ago and how long it has taken me to write this thread. Immediately after that conversation happened I DMed Marian and asked her if I could use+
+screenshots of the tweets so I could write a thread about it because I felt it would be a good learning experience/model for white people to see. She said yes, and left it at that. With that I had ideas spinning in my head about how I would write about it, life happened, etc+
Come to yesterday morning, when Marian DMs me politely asking if I ever got the thread written. So, again, I am in a moment where I feel "caught," where I want to ramble off again a whole bunch of excuses, some of them I know Marian would see as valid excuses, some not so much+
And this whole event has reminded me how I (and other white people) need to act more. We& #39;re all great about reading all the books, articles, etc. I am one that reads all the things, and then thinks about them, they spin around all the time in my head, but if my actions don& #39;t+
+match up with what is spinning around in my head, then all of that is pointless and I am not even close to becoming the ally that I want to be. And I am going to be very honest in saying that all of this sounded so much better in my head, that I know this long rambling thread+
+may or may not be making much sense, but I hope that it at least gets some conversations going, and more importantly actions going. Because bottom line, it was not Marian& #39;s job to hold me accountable for getting this thread written, but I am very grateful she did. We need action