Five Things White Activists Should Never Say
This article I’m featuring is a must read by any political organization or political activist – krystal
Example #5: “There are no people of color in our activist group; let’s go to a meeting of people of color and invite them to join our group.”
Many white activists have the impression that they have arrived. They think they no longer have any racist bullshit they need to work on. Therefore if people of a particular racial or ethnic group don’t want to work with them, it must be because they have yet to be informed the awesomeness that is their group of white activists.
There’s a reason I’m putting this remark last. I hope that after even a small sampling of racist comments white activists make – there are many others that aren’t included here – it’s apparent just how ridiculous it is to think that the only matter keeping people of various ethnic and racial minorities out of a given activist group is a lack of information. If an organization has disproportionately few people of color as members, it’s often because people of color don’t see how it benefits them, and that is often because the organization has racist tendencies that it has yet to address.
Perhaps the bigger problem with this remark is that it’s blatantly tokenizing. The people who make it aren’t primarily interested in forming a diverse coalition to confront the problems that people of color face; if they were, they’d visit the meeting of the people of color regularly and ask them how they could help without expecting glory for themselves or their organization. Instead they want to use people of color to make their activist group more diverse. They are making one more thing – segregation itself! – the responsibility of people of color.”
Please see the complete article here at People of Colour Organize!
Also, please check out this awesome video below by Matisyahu – One Day
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