yes. white ppl have the most racially segregated social lives of any group; Black ppl are illegible to white people in anything but the flattest ways

That's why you fixed your fingers to say "pop out and break norms" w/ apparent seriousness. https://twitter.com/realmattmorton/status/1297013442486972416

again, one reason Owens and Pearson and them can trip up ostensibly "I Want To Be An Ally"-ass white folks is that Owens et al traffic in the priorities of white movement conservatism. It's all very legible to white people in a way that Black political thought isn't.

The fact that white people will look at a bunch of Black Republican commentators with no substantial Black constituencies but almost entirely white support and still be befuddled by What It Might Mean is bc white people are so white!

there are long traditions of specifically Black conservatisms that have fundamentally different priorities and premises — concerned with Black power/security through conservative principles — than what Owens and the "race-doesn't -matter-just-work-hard" set be on.

The easiest way to think about this is: Black conservatisms are often grappling directly with the problem/threat of white supremacy and the welfare of Black communities; white conservative priorities are very often the things Black conservatisms are arrayed *against.*

it's the difference between the Black person who wants Black people to own guns bc the police won't protect them or may prey on them and the white person who belongs to the NRA with the Blue Lives Matter flag hanging in their yard. They're conservatisms but incompatible.

like, white people think the *Nation of Islam* is on the left because it's made up of Black people LOL

which tells you how central whiteness is to their understanding of the left-right continuum