I really fucked up here, and I want to break it down so y’all can see how I can continue to cause harm in these spaces when I do not think carefully about the consequences of my words and actions. @KimCrayton1 helped me understand what I did wrong here. https://twitter.com/jmglov/status/1289475310627377152

After I posted it, Kim reached out to me privately and told me that it was interesting that I didn’t call a thing a thing. Note she didn’t use the word “surprising” here, and I’ll come back to that.

I wasn’t sure what she meant initially, so I thought about it for a little while, and then saw the first problem, which is the most obvious one: I didn’t actually state that I think it’s clear that Trump and his supporters are fascists.

Kim confirmed that this is what she meant, and added that these kind of “hedging your bet” statements are one of the things that make it hard for marginalised folx to trust white people.

Now, it wasn’t my intention to hedge my bets, which actually makes the statement even *more* problematic, because there’s a reason that I worded it like that, and that reason wasn’t readily obvious to me. I did some thinking so I could understand what was going on in my mind.

The first thing that I thought of was that white people are conditioned to always leave themselves an escape hatch when talking about racism. For example, saying “racially charged language” instead of racist language.

That way, if we’re confronted by other white people, we can just say, “Oh, it was questionable to me, but if you say you weren’t being racist, I believe you.” White supremacy trains us to always give white people the benefit of the doubt, whilst being suspicious of Black people.

When we couch our language in “weasel words” like my “more and more clear,” instead of simply, “clear,” we are participating in white supremacy, whether we actually do weasel out of our statement or not.

I kept thinking about it, and I realised that there was actually a second problem with my statement, a much bigger and much more subtle one (to me—it’s probably not so subtle to Black people reading this).

If you’re white, see if you can find it before reading on.

The problem is that I quoted a very strong statement of Kim’s, thus putting her out in front, potentially in harm’s way, without back her up with an equally strong or even stronger statement of my own.

I figured out by myself that by equivocating whilst quoting Kim’s clear and powerful statement, I was failing to act in solidarity with her and taking the easy way out. The fact that this has the possibility to make Kim a target didn’t occur to me until she pointed it out.

As Kim said, me putting Kim out front whilst stating it myself in a way that reads as if I’m still deciding allows me to play the hero (look at me calling Trump out!) or the victim (no, you misunderstood me), never the villain (I’m actively harming Kim with this behaviour).

I did not do this intentionally, yet I still caused harm. And this is why impact is more important than intention every time. And this is why I cannot be satisfied that my intentions are good, so I’m an antiracist. In this case, I was a racist. I participated in white supremacy.

What I should have done is state, firmly and with no equivocation, that I think Trump is a fascist, his supporters are fascists, and anyone who doesn’t admit that is enabling fascism. Kim saw it before I did, but it’s fucking clear and we must stand with her against fascism.

I’m saying it now, unfortunately too late to avoid causing harm, so you know where I stand, and you’ll be able to hold me accountable when my actions do not match my words.

I apologise personally to Kim, and collectively to marginalised folx who I haven’t stood up for here. I will do better, I will think long and hard about this, and I will make amends.

I want to also go back to the beginning, when Kim told me it was “interesting” that I didn’t call a thing a thing, and not “surprising.”

This is because whiteness is racist by design and can’t be trusted by default without consistent, demonstrated antiracist behaviour.

And my behaviour here was racist, not antiracist. So whilst it was interesting that I acted this way, despite Kim’s teaching, despite my intentions, was interesting, but not surprising, because I acted as I was designed to act.

This was performative allyship at its worst.

I hope this thread was useful to someone so you can understand my fuck-up and avoid it yourself.