Dear white allies:
Institutionalized white supremacy makes POC feel literally endless amounts of anger, frustration, loneliness, exhaustion, illness, heartbreak, betrayal, grief, disbelief, hopelessness, amazement, homicidal rage, disillusionment, extreme sadness, mistrust, disorientation, pain, discomfort, paranoia, shock, amazement, worry, astonishment, weariness, wariness, bitterness, resentment, stress, fear, abandonment, self-doubt and millions of other incredibly destructive emotions...at all times!
Therefore, because of the sheer longevity and size of this five century old and incomprehensibly huge behemoth known as white supremacy, undoing it is going to require that those who would deign to call themselves allies, must aspire to pick up and carry the weight of those very same types of emotions that POC have been forced to carry mostly alone for all these centuries.
Ending five centuries of ruthless and violently entrenched white supremacy is going to require inconceivable amounts of gross, nasty, filthy, thankless and sickening work to fully uncover it and root it all out, from every nook and cranny of America. So, there can be no misconceptions that choosing to label oneself an ally is simply an all-around, warm-fuzzy feeling of mutually declared kinship with POC. Because, without question, declaring one’s ally-ship is supposed to mean signing up for a FIGHT! And ideally, a fight that the allies themselves should still willing to take up, even if POC are temporarily too bruised and battered to continue themselves.
So, if declaring that you are fully invested in the fight to end racism in America makes you feel all warm and fuzzy for more than the first introductory few minutes...chances are very high that you’re looking at it wrong! Because if you’re truly committed to doing it right, it’s supposed to, almost immediately, start making you feel versions of that same anger, frustration, loneliness, etc. too! And in no uncertain terms, if you’re not regularly feeling at least some of those same things that POC are feeling, once you’ve declared your ally-ship, it means one of two things. Either you’re not a being a threat to the people that are making POC feel those things. Or else, you’re not allowing POC to challenge your societal conditioning enough for it to make you angry, frustrated, lonely, etc. And your declarations or ally-ship are potentially hollow.
So...allies...how ‘ya feelin’??? And second, what have you allowed the people enduring the racism to teach you about racism?