#teamblackness

I do apologize.  I’m dealing with some personal and professional issues so my activity is still a bit off.  Anyway, I’m going to take a moment to say something I feel like is important.  This is specifically directed at my white followers and white progressives in general.

We’re fucking up.  We need to fix our shit.

For context:  I’ve engaged with a couple of people here this week over the Blacklivesmatter protest of the Bernie Sanders event in Seattle.  I’ve gotten some messages from folks making claims about the legitimacy and tone of the protests and I responded.  I’m going to be a little more in-depth about this.

More context:  I literally just started listening to podcasts this week (as I finally have a phone capable of handling them).  Today I listened to #TWIBPRIME with Elon James White #726, recorded yesterday.  This is the first time I’ve ever heard this podcast so I know nothing at all about them, but I heard some important shit in this episode and I think you would benefit from hearing it too.

About the protest:  I saw a video of the initial interruption.  My immediate knee-jerk reaction was that it was unnecessarily aggressive--and I was wrong.  White progressives:  it is not our fucking place to tell black people how to protest.  It is not our place to police their tone.  If you are white, like me, your voice and your opinion do not fucking matter in this discussion.  Black people know how to run their own fucking movements.  They’ve been doing it for over half a century.  And our white version of progressivism still often ignores structural racism.

There is a perceived danger here about a divided progressive movement, but the fact is that this is still primary season, and the Blacklivesmatter movement is protesting at Bernie’s events specifically because he is accessible and he (and supposedly us white progressives) can be reached.  If you consider yourself a progressive or a black ally, your only purpose here is to elevate black voices.

This is two hours long, but it’s important.  Listen to it.