A word on white #allyship:
This is a message I sent to a young white man who disrupted the event I co-organized w/ #BLM yesterday. Posting it here (w/o names) bc it includes a lot of important points about how allyship should (not), inc in academia. Folks need to do better. 1/

What you did last night was unacceptable. I’ve seen you speak often & seen you invoke the legacies of folks like Larry Little to much applause. That is important history, but you need to know much more than a Google Search abt ppl like Larry Little & the Black Panther Party. 2/

I strongly advise you to read the (auto)biographies of folks affiliated with the Black Panther Party. When you do, hopefully you will get some context for how utterly disrespectful your actions were yesterday. 3/

You began by telling me, “[Black woman co-organizer] will not cover the points she needs to cover,” so you were first going to “write her speech,” and then requested to speak instead. Unacceptable. 4/

[Co-organizer] is a Black woman. I told you we were elevating Black voices only at yesterday’s event. Any points she covered would be the points needed to be covered. Her voice matters. Period. Not your idea of what she should be saying. 5/

You (& any other white person) do not get to dictate how Black women share, speak, or present in this movement, the same Black women that you also like to invoke in the many speeches I’ve seen you give. 6/

You then once tried to divert the march at which time I spoke to you personally. At that point, if it was that hard for you to follow the Black leadership of yesterday’s event, which you knew specifically included [BLM] & myself bc we talked prior, then you should have left. 7/

Instead, you decided to continue to disrupt & lead a group of white & white-passing folks away from the larger group after making an unsolicited announcement. Unacceptable. 8/

Regardless of whether you thought the event was over (not the case, an event would never leave a grp of marchers to disperse individually a mile from the starting point) or whether you thought it wasnt disruptive enough (you can be as disruptive as you want on your own time). 9/

First, you put everyone in more danger. If you are about the movement for BLACK LIVES as you so often express, you would stay with the Black people marching to offer your body as protection against the violence we may face. This is Organizing 101. 10/

You never make a group smaller during an active march unless it is 100% unavoidable (e.g. someone has fallen ill and needs medical attention). That is dangerous, and most dangerous to Black and brown people. 11/

Secondly, you diverted media attention away from the Black organizers and marchers and onto yourself. I’m not sure what you got into organizing for, but diverting attention to yourself, a white male, and away from the Black marchers and organizers is not acceptable. 12/

There are no circumstances under which the Black Panthers or any leaders that you frequently reference would have tolerated that. 13/

Additionally, you were extremely disrespectful to an elder, telling [BLM Leadership] “you should have a better protest” and “you’re talking to bushes.” Again, if you read on the Black Panther Party, you will quickly find that type of disrespect of elders was not tolerated. 14/

Your actions completely changed the energy and flow of the event, affecting the Black people who were there in negative ways. Countless people came up to me to share how disturbing what you did was to them. 15/

So not only did you do the things I’ve just listed, you also created harm and hurt for the Black lives you claim to be organizing for. You made it about you, not us. 16/

Lastly, you put the organizers at great risk. If something would have happened, which it can when there are small splinter groups during a protest, then [BLM] and I would have been responsible for that, not you and your group of white and white-passing friends. 17/

Putting Black people at risk is not supporting Black lives or practicing allyship. You owe many people an apology. 18/

More importantly, you owe it to the Black lives you claim to fight for to humble yourself, to educate yourself about organizing beyond what you already have, to read deeply on the ethics of white allyship, to be able to sit down & not have everything be about you. 19/

This is what Black folks need from you at this moment and in this movement. 20/20