Anti-racism: Saviors, allies, and partners.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: making toast is hard. Too little heat, and it’s just bread. Too much, and it’s charcoal. Finding that balance, that middle ground, is an art. Or, actually, you could just use a timer, like the one in my toaster, but that’s beside the point.
Point is, there’s some spot between black and white that’s right, but finding it is hard. Maybe there’s a broader lesson in this or maybe this is a terrible analogy that’s going nowhere fast. We’ll see.
What got me started was this hilarious “White Savior” video by Seth Meyers. It’s one of those “funny because it’s true” parodies that’s spot on. Watch it. Now! I’ll just wait here, staring at you impatiently. Then go watch BlacKkKlansman for contrast. Still waiting.
Ok, humor aside, there is indeed a trope of feel-good-if-you’re-white movies about black racism that serve to alleviate the anxieties and guilt of white people who oppose racism in principle but don’t know how to do anything about it in the real world. The undeserving Oscar winner, Green Book, is a prime example of this.
While the white people in these movies are desperately well-meaning, they still treat Black people as inferiors, like children who need adult supervision to tie their own shoelaces. In doing so, they turn Black people into junior partners in their own liberation, passive recipients of outside aid. They buy into the very narrative that they ostensibly oppose.
This is offensive. While aid might be appreciated, infantilization is not, and nobody wants to have their own problems whitesplained or mansplained or straightsplained to them by a clueless outsider who wants to play at being their champion. For that matter, why would any oppressed minority want members of the oppressive majority to waltz into their activist group and take over?
It is understandably hard to trust these people—these racial carpetbaggers—despite their likely-good intentions because they don’t seem to have any skin in the game or even relevant personal experience. Given this, it would seem that their priorities would necessarily differ from those of the people they are trying to help, making them unfit to lead. Perhaps this is why BLM insists on black leadership.
The flip side is the notion of an ally, which was a perfectly good word until it came to mean a junior partner of a different sort. In this view, the role of an ally is not to lead but to follow. They have to be supportive, but not ask too many questions, and absolutely never make any suggestions. Donate your time and money, but be seen, not heard.
This, too, is offensive. So, do we really have to choose between one sort of subservient role or another? Do equal rights movements have to either be colonized by outsiders or relegate them to servitude? Before I try to answer my own rhetorical question, let me frame this in terms of the two types of equal rights movements.
There’s a powerful scene in BlacKkKlansman which intercuts between (white) Klansmen chanting “White power!” and Black student union members chanting “Black power!”. Despite the juxtaposition of the two, there is a deep contrast. The power that the KKK wants is for maintaining superiority, while the Black students want equality, not Black supremacy.
White supremacy is a partisan movement; it favors one group over others. Black civil rights is an equalitarian movement; it seeks to undo this favoritism, not to install a new favorite. In the same way, feminism is not a misandrous mirror to misogyny, it is simply the fight against it.
Nonetheless, false equivalence is rampant. White supremacists treat all civil rights activists as partisans. Perhaps this isn’t even so much a lie as it is blindness; they totally get how someone might want to fight for the group they identify with, but can’t wrap their bigoted little minds around the notion of wanting everyone to be treated fairly and therefore equally.
White supremacy is white identity politics, and its adherents project their partisanship onto their opposition. Through this lens, they understand how Black people can demand more rights for Black people but not why any white person might want to join them. They even came up with a nasty slur to describe whites who do not favor whites above all others: “race traitors“.
We can also see this in racists responding to Black Lives Matter with “all lives matter”. If we misinterpret BLM as only Black lives matter, then the response makes sense. If we correctly understand it as Black lives matter, too, then the response falls flat. After all, wanting Black lives to matter doesn’t mean wanting white lives not to. Human rights are not a zero-sum game. So if the BLM movement were to tap me for my PR skills, I’d suggest rebranding as BLMT to avoid being (intentionally) misunderstood as OBLM.
If we see black civil rights, such as BLM, as a partisan movement, then it makes sense for it to relegate white participants to second-class status. These white people are, in this view, just self-hating weirdos who are perversely working against their own interests. But if it’s an equalitarian movement, then it is not at odds with other equalitarian movements. Wanting Black people to be equal in no way conflicts with wanting Hispanics or women to be equal, much less wanting white men to be equal (but no more than that).
Call it intersectionality if you like, but all equal rights movements are part of one great movement for the equal rights of all. It is a single war with many fronts, and we are full partners who all have skin in the game, no matter the color of our skin. We each identify with many groups at once. While some are more privileged in particular contexts than others, what unites us is the moral imperative to design society as if we had no clue about our own identity.
When you think about it, even the most straight, cis, able, rich, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant man can have skin in the game because they have people they care about who are not so privileged. Besides friends and neighbors, there is always family, including mothers, sisters, and daughters. Life has its ups and downs, too. Over time, even those on the top rung in the hierarchy will slip from it by becoming sick or poor or elderly.
Moreover, being on the receiving end of one form of bigotry provides experience that is relevant to those on the receiving end of others. So if you’ve ever been discriminated against on any basis, or been subject to any sort of unfair treatment, it’s not hard to feel for for those who deal with this on a daily basis. You don’t need to identify with a particular group to identify with its plight and oppose its mistreatment. You need empathy: a working conscience and the ability to see all sides.
There is also a pragmatic aspect to this that BlacKkKlansman tackles head-on. The Black policeman, who poses as a white racist over the phone, still relies on a white cop to attend Klan meetings in his name. His fellow officer takes advantage of his white privilege to serve equality.
That’s a movie, but in real life, it is still counterproductive to alienate those who are willing to help. Embracing intersectionality allows taking full advantage of what individuals bring to the movement, whether it’s in their own skills, their connections, or their resources, regardless of how they identify or are identified.
It also brings an advantage stemming from their differences. When a white person calls for the equality of Black people or a man calls for the equality of women, it cannot be so easily dismissed as self-serving. This undermines the hostile narrative of it being a zero-sum, partisan struggle for supremacy.
Such outsiders can also serve as diversifiers, offering insights made possible by having more distance from the problem, and combating the tendency towards groupthink with cautions about how things will be seen from the outside.
There is no magic here. Being part of a group does not grant omniscience or infallibility about that group’s needs or how best to achieve them. While personal experience is an invaluable starting point, it does not replace education and an open mind. There is no substitute for the willingness to shut up and listen with humility. A good leader is one who knows when to follow; a public servant, not a dictator.
Given this, we should choose people for roles on the basis of their individual merit, not just their identity affiliation. Anything else is, by definition, bigotry. Does this mean that Black people need a white champion to rescue them or women need a chivalrous man to protect them? Not at all. But it also doesn’t mean that we should feed the partisan narrative by denying that they’re part of a broader fight for equality by denying all who support them the opportunity to be full partners, not mere cosplay allies.
Racism is wrong. Racism against anyone is wrong. Racism in the pursuit of anti-racism is still wrong. All bigotry is wrong; there are no exceptions or excuses. The best reason not to lower yourself to the same level as the mainstream racists is that it is immoral. This is sufficient reason in itself.
Some will argue that bigotry against the dominant group won’t harm them, but that’s not just false, it’s missing the point. This behavior is not only unjust, but self-defeating. It harms the oppressed more than the oppressor because it undermines our moral high ground and reduces us to yet another partisan movement that can be safely ignored by anyone not directly impacted.
Our shared goal is to build a world where people have the opportunity to reach their potential, regardless of their background. We are not going to beat bigotry with more of the same. Our movement for the goal of equality must be built upon the principles of equality, from the ground up. Otherwise, it is rooted in a contradiction that undermines it. Our fight for equality starts at home, in our own movement, which is why allies and saviors must both make way for partners.
