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This Jessica Krug essay raises an interesting question for me, which I'm sure folks have explored before: why do white scholars and activists frequently find it so hard to engage with matters of importance to Black people and other people of color without some masquerade?
It feels like these folks who colonize Blackness think there is no model for white engagement that is rooted simply in empathy and genuine interest; like they think no audience would believe that a white person's interest in issues that don't directly affect them is legitimate.
More cynically, it feels like these white scholars and activists aren't content to devote their labors to a field in which they think they can never be centered or primary, so they assume an identity that will allow that centering. It's all so weird and fucked up.
(Talking about this.) https://medium.com/@jessakrug/the-truth-and-the-anti-black-violence-of-my-lies-9a9621401f85
It's extra weird because there *are* white scholars and activists whose work engages with Black history, culture, and rights and who don't feel compelled to hide their whiteness. Some of them receive considerable acclaim for their work!
I want to say that the people who colonize Blackness are working from a fundamentally racist view of the importance of Black history, culture, and struggle. Like, they are implicitly saying, "This could only be compelling to people whom it touches directly."
And at the same time, I think they are doing that most white supremacist of things: supposing that they are entitled to lead, to be centered, to be unquestioned. Folks look at a white person who has a lot to say on these topics with skepticism (rightly!), which is not...
how we white folks are used to being treated when we speak. So occupying Blackness is a shortcut around overcoming that skepticism through time, respect, and rigor.
See, this is my whole point: the assumption that Black people and Black spaces are reflexively hostile to white people who approach with respect is (1) not true, (2) a racist construct, and (3) at the root of all this Doezalism. https://twitter.com/colBoh/status/1301593532893929473
*Dolezalism.
