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In case it helps, I want to share a bit about a historical figure who gives me strength: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I consider him a patron saint of using your privilege for good.
RT in case this is helpful to anyone else. 1/
RT in case this is helpful to anyone else. 1/
Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nat Turner, Elie Wiesel, Marsha P. Johnson all surely had more important historical impacts, and all deserve to be elevated in resistance narratives to an extent that Bonhoeffer generally is not, for good reason. 2/
He wasn’t part of a class of people who were under attack for the way they were born. He grew up in privilege. The stories of people like MLK who *were* born into targeted classes of people are inherently more important. But if you’re privileged and 3/
trying to be an ally, MLKs story doesn’t belong to you, it does not help a white ally to pretend he/she/they/ etc can understand and emulate MLK. Bonhoeffer was cis, straight, Christian, and white, in Germany. A blonde, he was exactly Hitler’s preferred type of person. 4/
He gained some notoriety as a Lutheran theologian, Lutheranism being the predominant Faith in Germany at the time. As the Nazis came to power, the Lutheran Church in Germany aligned itself with Nazism. This was alarmingly analogous to how mainstream American Christianity 5/
has aligned itself with rising American nationalism and white supremacy. Bonhoeffer refused to capitulate to the Nazis, writing and speaking out against nationalism and anti-semitism. He found himself directly in opposition to the Lutheran Church, preaching that fascism 6/
and the message of Christ are inherently incompatible. He had several close calls with arrest and violence. But he had money, was privileged in race and religion. He decried the fascists in the church, but was just as critical of the “non-fascists” who stayed silent. 7/
He went on a lecture tour of the US just before we entered the war. His friends at home and authorities in the US were all advising him not to go back. He was offered shelter in the US (contrast this, by the way, with how the US gov’t treated Jewish refugees). He declined. 8/
He went back to Germany, knowing what would happen. He continued as a voice for resistance. When his platform was taken, he became a spy, passing information to the allies. He knew that to be an ally of the hated and oppressed, he had to seek his own oppression. 9/
He died in Flossenberg Concentration Camp, weeks before Germany surrendered. Now, I know it’s hard to see optimism in a story that ends in a person being among the millions who died in concentration camps. His story gives me strength in two ways 10/
1. There is a spark of hope and resistance in human beings that is impervious to hate, imprisonment, and oppression. The stories of MLK and others show us this just as vividly. To me, this strength is awe-inspiring. Strength through force is easy, strength that transcends 11/
force shows me that guns, riot gear, tanks, surveillance... that isn’t real strength. There is something unbreakable in those who seek justice.
2. Bonhoeffer is an example that that strength is available to the privileged, if they truly embrace the fight against a system that 12/
2. Bonhoeffer is an example that that strength is available to the privileged, if they truly embrace the fight against a system that 12/
privileges them. I don’t have to be another ally who stays quiet. I don’t have to be scared of what fascism and white supremacy mean for *other* people, if I put myself in the way of it. Now, this doesn’t make all my privilege go away, I’m not pretending I can 13/
throw off white supremacy and white guilt or something. I’ll never be a target for violence the way people who aren’t white are. But if I take on some of that violence and oppression, I can take on some of that strength, and do the best I can. 14.
