No doubt, but again, the main issue in the OP and in this thread has been that when POC get a movement going, other issues should not be inserted by white people INTO the movement. That drains energy and attention from a specifically anti-racism movement that’s finally gaining some momentum, and it’s no wonder when its members don’t appreciate the common forms of dilution that white people (often unconsciously) cause that way.
So if white people do want to help combat racism, they should follow the lead of POC when they try to join POC-led movements, and contribute to such efforts as diminution of force multipliers in other times and spaces.
One of the issues here is the freight given the word and concept of racism. Can we go back to the old terminology, “prejudice”? Prejudice is really what many of you seem to be calling on - pre-judging based on skin color.
As Toni Morrison said, we’re all one race - the human race. People of all types make judgements based on how someone else looks instead of simply by what they are or what they do. Call it racism, ableism, fat-ism or any other -ism, it’s all prejudice and it’s all stupid.
Whatever your skin color or size or fashion sense, you should be outraged at the amount of police brutality we have become used to. You all should protest it whatever way you can, within civil responsibilities - don’t destroy other people’s property, whether it’s private or public. That’s as stupid as judging by looks. Stand and chant, write letters, blog, use social media, talk to your friends and family and neighbors about it - whatever way you feel you can do, do it.
The “white activists” in Berkeley were wrong. Not because they wanted to protest, but because they moved from protest (civil and righteous) to riot (against the law and against other’s human rights). They weren’t wrong because they were white people, they were wrong because they were stupid people.
Until we start discriminating based on actions and not looks, we’re doomed to fight only over which cause is worth fighting over.
The lesson for white people are: vote, don’t let the racists in your lives dominate the conversation, and do your jobs with sensitivity to the consequences of your decisions.
I keep thinking we need to reinstate solidarity as a principle of political action; it’s neither the liberal fantasy of “color blindness”, nor the self-imposed isolationism of identity politics, but the understanding that the general struggle against oppression requires close attention to the particularities of the issue at hand.
(I’m trying to find effective ways to express this idea.)
And in the Eric Garner case, the murder of a disabled black man by the police.
I can’t see the difference between someone ignoring the fact that he was black, as above and as in “all lives matter,” and someone ignoring the fact that he was disabled and that this has been used to shift the blame from the police to him.
