We can still just give up on white men?

Anyway, the only slightly-subtext there seems to be that men of any race aren't worth considering as a solution. Which, frankly, is a bit of a relief because I'm so tired.

The problem with this suggestion seems to be the idea that all white women live in the same community. Ms Gill should consider the possibility that the sort of white women who become social workers and teachers in non-profit schools do not attend cocktail parties with the sort of white women who vote for Trump.

3: I think the idea is for the "good" white women to embed themselves in the community of the "bad" white women. This sounds like a decent premise for a reality tv show, but I'm dubious about it as a strategy for bringing about political change.

1: White men are not to blame! We poor sweet testosterone-addled numskulls can't be expected to think!

It's those darned white women, and men of color! We are very disappointed in you!

I think the most effective version of this is for white progressive women to work on members of their own family.

Or men! At least Moby.

I don't think he's really that bad.

I read this as a parody of all the times a Black person or a Muslim does something bad and every other person in that minority community is told that they need to "fix" the morals of that community. Which of course never happens when a white person commits a crime. But I guess the earnestness of it suggests she's not joking.

6: I am pretty sure that my uncle voted for Trump. He certainly supported Bush. He worked in MA Republican politics (gubernatorial) with some success. I talked to him about racism in 2004, and he gave me the whole line about Bill Cosby and Oprah being rich black people. I also inadvertently started a huge argument about torture on Christmas Eve one year. My cousin is a huge liberal and they've been arguing about this stuff since he was a teenager.

My uncle is also the kind of guy who would pay cash to get Lasix and the apply for a job that required uncorrected vision. All of my other relatives are Democrats. My mother might be a Republican officially, but my mother is not sane. I don't think I have any relatives that I can work on.

I think there are some people who can work on a certain subset of Evangelical white women who are opposed to abortion but care about women. My uncle doesn't really care about anyone other than himself. In a way, he was Trump before Trump

The role of white men is to support white women financially, so they can quit their jobs as teachers and social workers and go home to the suburbs where they spread the gospel that everything that's bad in the cities can be cured if white people stay away. Phyllis Schlafly's husband is our role model.

Similarly, the role model for white women is Phyllis Schlafly. If anyone missed it, this is one of those "so far left it turned into a fascist right" arguments. She is literally telling white women to quit their jobs and stay home. And when they get home, to advocate to other white women to stop caring about what happens to non-white people. Kind of like "defund police," except explicitly extended to defunding social workers and teachers also.

Alicia Sanchez Gil practices what she preaches: she is supported by a rich white man in the form of a grant from the Roddenberry Foundation. The grant enables her to preach to suburban white women over twitter.

White people, the final frontier.

So my non-Trumper brother has been telling me that our Trumper parents have gone all in for Trump, believe the election has been stolen and everything though they haven't gone Q. They have bought a shotgun. They've never owned guns before.

One of the weird things about it is my father's core values as I've known them and life experience are so much closer to Biden's than to Trump's.

Don't know anything about the author, but reading the tweet without more specific context, it comes across to me as, at heart, not intended so much as serious political analysis, but rather as pretty relatable irritation at a certain sort of missionary impulse. It's like: "My family doesn't need your advice/charity, thank you very much. Go take care of your own family!" Particularly when the person offering the (perceived as patronising) advice has family dysfunctions of her own.

I guess it's harder to shoot yourself with a shotgun than a handgun, so yay moderation?

It's also harder to accidentally shoot somebody in the next house through the wall.

I've finally gotten old and crabby enough that I'm systematically irritated with activisty types even when I generally agree with their goals. I would call this sort of thing something intended to be take "seriously but not literally" and I find that super annoying. But on that level, I think it's directed primarily to white women who are in close family or social contact with Trump voters.

but rather as pretty relatable irritation at a certain sort of missionary impulse. It's like: "My family doesn't need your advice/charity, thank you very much. Go take care of your own family!" Particularly when the person offering the (perceived as patronising) advice has family dysfunctions of her own.

I think this is right.

14: Yeah, I don't even get it. In my father's case it was a bit different, a combination of "I got mine, Jack" and extreme cynicism allowing for conspiracy theories: they're all lying to you, you can't trust anything, so go with the one who gives you tax cuts. Build your identity around that. What a sucker.

When I was younger I had this idea that people trained as engineers would be very open to epistemologies grounded in both empiricism and logic--how else are you going to know how to keep the bridges up?--and I've been constantly disappointed by the class. Not everyone, but there's a degree of roteness, a rejection of any interest in how they know stuff, that's just so fucking depressing. I suppose I should take it as a lesson to be careful.

Anyway, I'm not a woman and I'm not about to go commit social work, but when I am involved in politics with people, black or white, it isn't primarily to help them. It's because that's where the votes are (according to whoever figures that out) and I want to win.

I still have this Gorillas in the Mist idea that I should move to a snotty neighborhood and wear high-end clothes but also a safari hat, and carry a notebook. Then I would spend a month visibly practicing things like "striding into the local elementary school with a sense of entitlement" or "flagging down managers" or whatever other parody I've gleaned from Karen memes. Then, after getting a reputation as a total loon, I should try to make friends with people, and keep asking for do-overs until I properly mimic their mannerisms. And hopefully I should be completely oblivious as to whether these acclimating tics are themselves off-putting.

(22 is honestly how my mom approaches all parts of life. It's mostly fine but some people are really unable to understand what's going on.)

(Not that she does it in particularly high-end situations, but she's very explicit and mechanical about learning social norms in general.)

The ear tags are annoying.

[Jots down in notebook: ear tags are annoying]

Track with leg bands.

20.2 Ha, my father also was an engineer.

I guess I live in a high-ish end white neighborhood, but everyone is kind of schlubby in their clothing. It's the local ethos.

22 is great. I'm imagining a David-Attenborough-style voice:
Day 54 - They're beginning to accept me as one of their own.

The white people with nice clothes tend to live in Shadyside or Point Breeze, I think.

Or the actual suburbs.

There's a gradient in your neighborhood where it gets a bit less schlubby further north, but that's mediated by an increase in students. You're also affected by proximity to Greenfield, which is maximally schlub, in an endearing way.

She's not talking about community in the literal, geographic sense. She's talking about "the white community" in the way that pundits always refer to "the black community."

the sort of white women who become social workers and teachers in non-profit schools do not attend cocktail parties with the sort of white women who vote for Trump.

I beg to differ. They most definitely do, especially if you expand "cocktail parties" to "regularly interact and socialize as peers."

There are a lot of white women I know who are very comfortable going into places where they have MORE social status and power to "help" -- and very UNcomfortable "making a fuss" by doing anything so mild as bringing up politics in situations where they have LESS social status and power. There is a suffocating bias toward "civility" in terms of not mentioning divisive topics in many UMC and MC white spaces.

I read this as a parody of all the times a Black person or a Muslim does something bad and every other person in that minority community is told that they need to "fix" the morals of that community. Which of course never happens when a white person commits a crime. But I guess the earnestness of it suggests she's not joking.

Definitely not a parody. Just someone being angry.

22 et seq.: I had a college friend who thought about being an anthropologist of the rich, in hopes of going native.

Here's an addendum: Today I'm at a (virtual) professional event. Three of the other white women here, who are working on an education-related issue that helps improve equity for low-income people, have public social media feeds that, respectively:

1) Describe themselves as a "warrior for the unborn"
2) Praise their state's Republican, anti-mask governor for supporting "freedom"
3) Retweet conspiratorial, pro-Trump theories and false news stories

These are women in professional roles, in helping professions, whose job it is to serve predominantly low-income people of color.

The norms of civility and professionalism say that I shouldn't comment on their political posts. But by continuing to interact with them in a friendly and collegial way, I'm also sending the message that their beliefs are not disqualifying for the work that they're doing. Arguably I do think that is true for example #1, but examples #2 and 3 are immediately, dangerously problematic for the students they serve.

Tl;dr: I'm part of the problem.

My professional world is pretty different. Nobody actually says that Trump is a piece of shit, but it's pretty implicit.

I see that situation around here, too, and I honestly have no idea how one is supposed to proceed. The whole thing is rigged. Call them out? Ignore? Respond to tweets? There is only being sucked into the muck or ignoring the muck.

Unless you are specifically asking about whether or not you should develop the kind of relationship with those women that would allow you to chip away at their biases over time, your hands are completely tied. And developing those relationships sounds miserable.

Well, she does just say "work in your community", not "look for the worst community of white people you can find and work there", which I don't think fits with her advice at all.

Like, if I were to say, "what is my community of white people", I'd say the white people among: my union, science fiction fans in my general milieu, various hippy types and low middle class middle-aged underemployed vaguely left people who don't do enough. Considering them/us, I think there are lots of things I could do, ranging from pushing my union to support various initiatives to getting involved with neighborhood/local orgs where the effort/success ratio makes sense.

I think it's very easy to throw up our hands and say that it looks too difficult. Doing social work, etc, isn't easy at all but the path ahead is clear - you get your degree, you volunteer, you do your job and deal with on the job stuff. "Organize among white people to make things less terrible" is really, really unclear and that makes it seem very difficult.

Also, we are of course faced with situations where white people have organized as white people, like SURJ, and have kind of screwed it up. It seems really difficult to stay on course when white people are organizing white people against racism. This is especially true when you consider how there are definite career rewards in certain areas for anti-racist white people, ie you can get paid speaking gigs when Black activists can't, etc.

And the most likely outcome is in fact conflict and various kinds of blech. There aren't too many anti-racist white people, historically, who have what you'd call unclouded reputations. John Brown, maybe. Everyone else gets some pretty harsh criticism from at least some quarters.

I think probably the best starting point would be to read a bunch of books by people who have organized against racism about how they did it, because it would give you a more detailed set of ideas about how white people's orgs and individual white people have historically fit into these movements. That would probably help you think strategically and pick some particular place/project where you could hope to achieve something. I mean, maybe what you do is push your neighborhood association to be less police-happy, maybe you support a union drive at a local business, etc etc.

I think there's also a vague sense that "activism" involves Doing All The Things All Of Which Have Clear Heroic Outcomes, and therefore two boring city meetings a months where you try to make allies to achieve small but practical changes isn't really activism. But when faced with Doing All The Things, Doing All The Things feels so overwhelming.

The other thing is that there is less and less fun activism right now. Like, I literally had a dream about this (even though I won't be doing very much activism until the pandemic is under control). Things are harder and meaner and more dangerous and more boring and depressing. The sort of nineties activism which was actually much of the time pretty fun and seemed to involve a lot of signs and alterna-culture and a general optimism is largely over right now. That's not to say that there's no fun to be had - at least, my internet buddies who are in better health are doing mutual aid food distribution stuff that seems very rewarding - but really, activism used to be my fun.

I also think that it takes a long time (in the sense of six months to a year) to make headway in large organizations, because it takes time to get to know people and get a feel for things. So it's really easy to feel like it's not working or not worth it until then, and that's another "why am I doing this trivial boring thing that I hate where no one talks to me, surely this is not Doing It Right".

On a last note: I think that people who are one up on the social ladder (whether that's white people, men, straight people, etc) really, really underestimate how important it is to have teachers, doctors, social workers, co-workers, union leaders, etc who are from your background. It's not just a matter of representation or formal knowledge or "getting along"; there's just deep culture/knowledge/patience stuff that is so baked in that it can almost never be replicated by someone not from that background. And I think that one-up people tend not to realize how they talk to/act around one-down people, even when it's totally unconscious and unintended - with literally the most kindness and the best good will in the world. It is for these reasons, I think, that people get frustrated when one-up people take all the teaching/social work/etc jobs.

Mainly, everything is terrible, change is going to be difficult and most of the change-making may have its deep satisfactions but it won't be fun or simple.

Also I am so scared about the pandemic right now, I can barely move or speak.

Definitely not a parody. Just someone being angry.

Yeah. Seems to me the entire content of the post was "Fuck you."

Which, okay, fine. I understand that.

We're on an early lunch break now, so a few more thoughts while I have time.

I honestly have no idea how one is supposed to proceed.

Here are some tactics I've used at various points in the past:

A) Obliviously assume good faith: "I hope you are doing well in these difficult times! I'm sure your institution must be juggling a lot trying to keep students safe. How are you managing Covid risks?" [You have to be prepared to keep this up for multiple rounds of conversation and just keep obliviously barreling along even if they give nonsensical or generic responses.]

B) Pro-actively make my biases clear: "I've been really persuaded by the research on how developing good critical thinking skills is so important for people in ANY job. That seems so important right now. I'm a big fan of [XYZ tool which is grounded in reality]. Do you use it?"

C) Seize on something else they've said and use it as a wedge: "I'm so glad you talked about robotics! I was talking to a big employer the other day and they said the biggest issue they have is workers who come in with these really cockamamie beliefs about science. How do you make sure that your students are prepared for rigorous science?"

D) Appeal to their belief in hierarchy: "I saw that your Governor had a good speech the other day about how important it is for students to be prepared for X. I'm always trying to figure out how to do that better. How do you approach it?"

(Notice that none of these involve directly confronting what I consider to be the wrongheaded belief. That tends to get people's backs up defensively, and I've rarely tried it in professional settings, though I've done some deep canvassing in political work that is quite interesting in this regard.)

I mostly use tactic A. I don't really assume it's going to change the mind of the *particular* person I'm talking to, but I'm always thinking about who else is quietly listening when I'm having these conversations.

40: John Brown reminded me that my great-whatever grandmother that I was named after was an active abolitionist. Very involved in a Women's Abolition Society, but that was such an obvious wrong and something that white people had to change. It was a worse time, but she had a morally simpler choice.

40 & 42 are both good.

I think there's also a vague sense that "activism" involves Doing All The Things All Of Which Have Clear Heroic Outcomes, and therefore two boring city meetings a months where you try to make allies to achieve small but practical changes isn't really activism. But when faced with Doing All The Things, Doing All The Things feels so overwhelming.

The other thing is that there is less and less fun activism right now. Like, I literally had a dream about this (even though I won't be doing very much activism until the pandemic is under control). Things are harder and meaner and more dangerous and more boring and depressing. The sort of nineties activism which was actually much of the time pretty fun and seemed to involve a lot of signs and alterna-culture and a general optimism is largely over right now. That's not to say that there's no fun to be had - at least, my internet buddies who are in better health are doing mutual aid food distribution stuff that seems very rewarding - but really, activism used to be my fun.

To what extent is this a corollary of politics becoming increasingly nationalized and (therefore) electoral politics feeling more important and local projects less important. Not the exact same dynamic, but I feel like they're connected.

I'm OK with starting politely to lead up to "It's indecent to say that out loud." I don't know how to actually communicate beyond that though, this whole political episode is making theoretical ideas about existing in a synthetic voluntarily constructed hyperreality pretty uncomfortably concrete. Literally I live in a different conceptual world, and have few contacts with people who live in the other one.

Not sure what to say-- Ms Gill is basically right, and I'd like to help, but no personal or professional avenue to do that exists for me that I see. Details:

I have a few elderly blue collar neighbors who are Trumpies. I know people who have basically lost their parents, it's extremely sad.

The two Trumpies I interact with on FB at all are lost causes-- one an active racist and performative fundie whose personal faith has never been outwardly apparent and didn't stop him from stealing a family bible that my ex-MIL treasured, the other elderly, she has no boundaries-- expressions of loving god, bible verses, good and evil, and Trump fandom are all part of the same commingled stream. I did ask whether she wanted me to respond when she sent me a message. She said she'd stop sending messages. Doesn't like vaccines, god heals.

I have a friend who has neighborhood friends who are Trumpies, nice enough people to meet socially. I had one extended discussion about global warming with one of them, in earshot of his kid. Aslo one work colleague, but when we've talked it's only professional topics, really it is kind of asinine to say "I saw your facebook ad, what's wrong with you?"

Instability of an atomized society I guess.

I'm a little more sympathetic to this point of view because there are a lot of women I know who would be totally willing to go to a march for BLM but who won't advocate for what they believe in UMC circles (or whose circles aren't typically diverse politically, and I include myself here.)

I believe a lot of political interaction depends on trust rather than information, and so it's probably more effective just to be out in the community being a little political than to be a traditional activist for most people. I'm not sure it scales, but there is something to the collapse of third spaces contributing to the collapse in democratic epistemic norms.

Ignore 45 and read 42 instead.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't John Brown been considered a crazed zealot/madman by most of the influential historians?

We had an extended argument about that here years ago. I think the upshot was "yes".

I know people who have basically lost their parents, it's extremely sad.

We have some here on the blog, in fact.

39: God knows I'm not a role model, but I don't have much of a problem with saying, "I disagree, and here's XYZ from my experience that explains why." You think COVID is a hoax? You should hear what my friends back East had to say -- you weren't hearing the half of it in the media. You think it's impossible to get your kids to wear masks? I don't know -- my 3-year-old niece has been wearing them in daycare since June and it seems to be working OK.

48: That's certainly how I was taught it. I was also taught that the Radical Republicans were, well, radical, and that the country benefited from the moderating influence of the Southerners returning to the Union.

I think it's possible that Brown's reputation suffers because of his lack of tactical efficacy.

He has a song.

I'm trying to think of the last time I spoke to someone I knew or suspected of being a Trump voter. Back in 2015 I was at a weeklong training and ended up talking to a guy who was Trump-curious, and kind of grilled him about what was wrong with him. But I can't think of anyone since then. My neighborhood, job, and family are all pretty politically uniform.

There's a guy at work I am slightly suspicious of because he's overly enthusiastic about right wing Dems like Bullock and Max Rose, but that's about it.

Phone banking was the last time I talked to one.

Sure would be nice to see a little more critical thought about gender in these many, many, many rhetorical appeals to white women. (I don't mean "critical thought" that is exonerating, but acknowledging that solidarity and influence within a gendered group is complicated in particular, definable ways.) I'm not sure "demographic data in exit polls" is an exact proxy for a realistic model of gender within a group... But what do I know. Maybe white femininity is the most operationally monolithic gender identity available, because power crushes it into a sedimentary mass.

54: This is a big problem which I think the linked post doesn't quite get. I'm probably an extreme outlier -- university faculty in a very red state, shiv works from home so we don't socialize with his coworkers (who sometimes think he's LDS) -- but nearly my entire social circle is affiliated with the university, including the kids' friends. My oldest thought for a while that only mommies could be professors. My kid is in the gifted magnet program and reported that his class of second graders in a state that went 65% for Trump were all really excited about Biden ("the teacher had the map on her computer and Trump is red and Biden is blue.") My cycling group is about the only group I know that's somewhat more politically diverse and even there, it skews not-from-Utah and so is about 50/50.

I'm sure other people have more diverse daily environments, but at least for some it would take an active effort along the lines of making a whole new set of friends to be around people who regularly differed politically.

55: My lefty Montana friends are big fans of Bullock, but in part because the alternative is the Western variety of wingnut.

57: Can you elaborate on what you mean? I'm not sure I'm following.

I don't have much of a problem with saying, "I disagree, and here's XYZ from my experience that explains why." You think COVID is a hoax? You should hear what my friends back East had to say -- you weren't hearing the half of it in the media. You think it's impossible to get your kids to wear masks? I don't know -- my 3-year-old niece has been wearing them in daycare since June and it seems to be working OK.

It's a lot easier for me to do this in purely social situations. In social-professional situations it's often trickier because I need people to be on board with what I'm trying to get them to do professionally, and so alienating them is actively unhelpful.

...and this is how white supremacy functions. sigh.

It comes back to The Big Sort, or rather the issue The Big Sort was about because the book itself was kind of dumb. The sort of white people who vote for Trump have largely isolated themselves from both minorities and from the sort of white people who don't vote for Trump.

This isn't completely true, in every community that votes 80-20 one way, there's that 20% of people embedded in a community that disagrees with them, and people like that do have access to do evangelism (and to the extent they are doing it, I am very grateful and would send cookies if I knew who to send them to). But a lot of people are on politically very completely sorted environments.

59: Oh, he's fine where he's running. But a New Yorker who identifies him as what we need in national politics, I'm looking at funny.

57: I think 34.1 addresses this pretty well.

64: Spell that out? I'm not sure either what the question is in 57 or how 34 addresses it.

I haven't talked to a Trump supporter in probably over ten minutes.

60: I was trying to avoid getting completely sucked into this argument for the better part of a day, but... let me see. Here's the story as far as I understand it:

One immediate, widely propagated, mainstream reaction to Trump's 2016 victory among white feminists was to see it as a betrayal of women, and of feminism. Women of color saw that widespread reaction alongside the exit polls showing that a majority of white women had voted for Trump, and said: bullshit. You yourselves are betraying women, and also have the gall to cast yourselves as victims. Come back when the D/R split among white women is more like 75/25 and then we'll talk. You think there's some set of race-neutral "women" whose "feminism" is a bulwark against the right? -- well, if you really think that, prove it. Bring all those wayward white women into the fold.

I think that was the topical start to this ongoing dialogue about white women's obligations (not white men's, not white women's vis-a-vis white men, etc. etc.) going on in places where white liberal women see it and share it and talk about it among themselves. I'll stop here. Does this seem accurate to the rest of you, that the election was the thing that kicked this up into higher visibility?

I'm guessing. I don't actually know, since we were discussing calculus, not politics.

I have to admit that the sort of thing in the OP is hurting my feelings these days and making me a little defensive too. Not even for me, but also for me, I know a lot of white women who've been putting in crazy work and money to get Trump out of office. And be less racist. And follow instructions about what would be useful. And, like, if the instruction is to stop working in communities of color and do anti-racism stuff in our own community, then that's the instruction. But I notice that they're still asking me for money (and I am still giving it).

Anyway, the other day I saw this and I actually cried. I know that we're not supposed to need reassurance and that we shouldn't put the burden on Black people of telling us we're one of the Good Ones. I also know that maybe some of the work right now is to keep doing good things without affirmation. But I was really grateful for some acknowledgement that wasn't, for example, 'White feminists are THE WORST." I can mentally distinguish myself from a white woman Trump voter, so I'll keep doing that and keep giving and working.

I will agree that it is really, really hard to be explicit about race in professional and social circles. I am trying to do better.

The sort of white people who vote for Trump have largely isolated themselves from both minorities and from the sort of white people who don't vote for Trump.

The issue is what percent of the population lives in the boundary between red and blue, ie the suburbs or small cities. And since perimeter grows half as fast as area, the bigger your urban core, the smaller your suburbs. It's related rates all the way down.

But then we have to take into account the width of the suburban annulus...!

So I think the Big Sort is too simplistic.

67: I think that's right -- you might call it backlash to the Women's March. While any individual white woman might not support Trump, organization of women-as-women against Trump is made hypocritical by his having won a majority of white women. I'm not sure I agree with that position, but I certainly recognize it and I don't definitely disagree with it.

I understood 57 (and lk can correct me here) as pushing back at the implicit contention that white women are a monolithic entity, such that one part of the group is responsible for the thoughts or actions of another part of the group. But as Witt points out, this is the kind of rhetorical move that is deployed against minority communities, especially Black Americans, all the time.

Maybe the Gill tweet is an expression of anger at the kind of punditry that Witt describes in 34.1, and isn't to be taken literally. But maybe it's also recognizing that minority groups do have special influence within, and responsibility for, the acts and statements coming out of our communities, and white women should too.

72 to 65

That link in 69 is really nice and lovely.

I will say that a Trump Train went by, slowly, full of shouting, when I was jogging pre-election, and there was a black man out along side them, and I totally had my finger on my phone, to record if they seemed to start focusing their attention on them, and my heart was pounding. I empathize with the woman.

It's something more like: I think the appeal is to white women to use specifically feminine strategies to reach other white women: emotional appeals, non-threatening niceness, gentle influencer stuff, constructive feedback, sisterhood, whatever. There is this fantasy that this dialogue can happen most effectively within a gendered group where certain gender norms operate, and that people with different racialized or gendered backgrounds won't have the same pull. But I don't hear people talk about the gender part of this explicitly. To be fair, this discussion here seems to be about more gender-neutral situations anyway.

67: This seems completely accurate to me, and I admit to some surprise that it isn't baseline accepted understanding for everyone here. It seems extremely bland and factual. What you DO about it might be different, but what is the counter-argument that it isn't true?

(I guess this connects to 69 too, because to me the response is the same as the feminist response to men who are frustrated when they hear a generalized statement: "If it isn't about you, don't make it about you." I generally don't think I'm personally indicted by those sort of complaints, AND at the same time I recognize that I'm a member of a class that broadly IS indicted by those complaints, and that I have a responsibility and obligation to do something about/with my fellow white women to shift that.)

I think the appeal is to white women to use specifically feminine strategies to reach other white women:

I'm not hearing this at all, in any circle that I'm part of.

67.1: I don't know that there is significant disagreement here about that -- I don't think I saw any explicitly stated.

People who grew up in the Soviet Union are often Trumpy (see also Cuba, Vietnam). So I'm sure I interact professionally with plenty of Trump voters, I try to avoid knowing who specifically though. Otherwise it's just my Trump-voting black cop kid brother (and probably his wife, though I don't know).

"If it isn't about you, don't make it about you."

I myself have said this in other contexts and I do understand that's part of the job for me right now (to not take it personally). I might be even more hypocritical in that I simultaneously hate hedged qualified statements, which seem all wishy-washy and rhetorically weak.

Maybe there isn't a great answer, except having a mental and emotional strategy to respond to blanket denunciations.

M has some Trump-supporting extended family. They're ultra-Catholic (like, Tridentine Mass ultra-Catholic) and single-issue anti-abortion voters. They have denounced M as "satanic," so any attempt on his part to change their way of thinking is unlikely to be well-received. In fact, a few years ago had an intervention for his cousin who was spending too much time with him. Like, an actual intervention, where they had people from their church come to the house to harangue the cousin, sprinkle the rooms with holy water, and put up crosses, etc.

I actually really like them. They're extremely funny people, both intentionally and unintentionally.

(I guess this connects to 69 too, because to me the response is the same as the feminist response to men who are frustrated when they hear a generalized statement: "If it isn't about you, don't make it about you." I generally don't think I'm personally indicted by those sort of complaints, AND at the same time I recognize that I'm a member of a class that broadly IS indicted by those complaints, and that I have a responsibility and obligation to do something about/with my fellow white women to shift that.)

That sounds like the correct response, but it's worth noting that there's a certain instability in that position -- in that whether something is about you can change depending on who you're talking to or reading. It requires accepting a certain tension.

We do what we can, and those of us with privilege should use it to help those that do not have it. Not in an exclusive way, of course* -- but the idea that I should not use my education and skillset to help people who ask me for it, or to help give voice to the voiceless working with appropriate people, isn't exactly persuasive.

Hey, so we've managed to have 863 new cases on 770 tests. I guess there are lags. Anyway, the woman I office-share with just tested positive. We stay in our respective offices mostly, when I even go downtown, but we do pass each other walking past the receptionist's desk. I don't think I've seen her since Wednesday -- I guess I should go get a rapid test, because if I've picked it up from her Wednesday or before, it'll show up, right? (Maybe I saw her on Tuesday? I don't remember.)

Now, of course, I'm starting to cough. The brain is tricky.

* [extended analogy deleted]

I have to admit that the sort of thing in the OP is hurting my feelings these days and making me a little defensive too.

I sometimes get defensive, but then I remember: Oh yeah, I hate white men too!

76.1: Oh, I didn't want to assume that this dialogue started at the point at which I personally became aware of it, which was after the election. There's been discussion of how white feminists are the worst for ages, obviously, but I wanted to make it explicit that I was thinking about and talking about a Trump-era thing.

77: but you do see a "white women need to talk to other white women" focus, to some extent, no? It seems like some kind of call for gender-based solidarity, to me. I don't know how that's supposed to work without knowing how the gender part works. I guess I'm an idiot.

Anyway, I'll stop; this is going nowhere and there are more productive directions upthread.

I had the same reaction as 18. At some point, I crossed the line into "cranky old person". Though to be fair, it's probably somebody just having a bad day, and with social media everybody's bad day gets broadcast world-wide.

Something struck me once about modern-day activism. Putting aside the moral questions, it's more rewarding to be a conservative than to be a lefty activist. I realized this reading a conservative (natch). If you are an activist, you are never supposed to feel good about yourself for what you've done. You can see it in the tweet. I would say that if you are a white woman, and you spent the last three months phone-banking or whatever, you have done enough, for now. But that's not the model of activism today -- if you ever feel like you tried hard to do good, you are automatically suspect.

The conservative I read was a professor who was boasting that two students came to him to complain that something he was doing was sexist. (This was several years ago. Now you'd probably keep this story out of print.) He said, "That sounds really terrible. But you know, I don't care." That's terrible, right? That's exploiting your own privilege. But this is a superpower that conservatives have. They just take something terrible, and not care. Traditionally the reward for caring is that you get to feel a sense of your own virtue. But in modern activism, that's shameful. There are white women who gave all they could to combat Trump and the Republicans, and they should feel proud for doing it.

Putting aside the moral questions, it's more rewarding to be a conservative than to be a lefty activist. I realized this reading a conservative (natch). If you are an activist, you are never supposed to feel good about yourself for what you've done.

I swear I wrote a post about exactly this phenomenon, probably circa 2008? Something like "Liberals leave you feeling bad about yourself for not doing enough to help others, conservatives tell you that you're fine and your problems are other people's fault, and that's why it's a tough sell."

white feminists are the worst

I'm totally down with 'if it's not about you, don't make it about you.' I also think that demonstrably untrue hyperbole is more damaging that a lot of hyperbolists account for. The fucking Nazis are the goddam enemy. Lots of people are potential allies. Acting as if people who are potential allies are no better than the fucking Nazis is stupid, and to the extent that I'm hoping a particular movement succeeds, counter to what I consider my own goals. If we're in a foxhole, taking fire, you shooting yourself in the foot obviously hurts you way more than it hurts me, but it does hurt me. "It's not about you' is, in that context, bullshit: everything about our ability to beat the fucking Nazis is about each and every one of us.

The analogy was worth taking the punishment.

Of course allies should be appropriately deferential and respectful.

85.2: I think that's right -- maybe not that people are suggesting the use of specifically feminine tactics, but that there's an implication that there are white women's communities or spaces in which white women have opportunities to influence other white women, in a way that men wouldn't be able to.

88: It would be awkward if I read the quote from the conservative here.

89: just to be clear, I was quoting Megan in 69.2 with that phrase -- should have put the quotation marks in. Don't get covid, Charley! Can we have a check-in thread?

Liberals are the conscience of the country, and being a conscience is like being the whiny nagging smurf who is always smothering on Redneck Smurf's good time.

If I wasn't banned, I'd pop in to say that I know that neither you nor Megan are proponents of this view. No one actually believes it. There's an extent to which allies can be shamed into better behavior. Everyone responds differently to that sort of thing, and what might be too small a dose for one person could be a fatal dose to another. And lots of people are immune altogether. I'm not saying it's never useful as a tactic, just that there are often going to be other approaches that are going to be more effective.

I strongly doubt that telling pretty much anyone to quit their job is going to be effective.

As they say, the people listening to hold music waiting to schedule an appointment for a test envy the people who've gotten the disease.

37 and 42 are still my favorite comments in this thread so far. Thanks, Witt, for whatever that's worth.

IANWoman, and my family, friends, and neighbors are generally pretty politically homogenous, and my work brings me into limited contact with others in general. (But on second thought, just 20 minutes ago I learned that a coworkers was much more religious than I would have guessed, so maybe I shouldn't assume.) At first I couldn't think of the opportunity for outreach like that. On second thought, it would mostly be online. On reddit and in World of Warcraft I encounter lots of people I'd disagree with, or could encounter them if I tried. Just a week or so ago a guildmate said that the coronavirus had a 99.97 survival rate. I pushed back a bit and wished I had pushed back more, but that's why they call it l'espirit d'escalier. (I'd never talk like that outside Unfogged...)

Also, we are of course faced with situations where white people have organized as white people, like SURJ, and have kind of screwed it up.

What's your take on SURJ, may I ask? I attended one of their intro meetings - probably in 2017? - and still get their email newsletter, but it's mostly only pointed to other things to get involved in / donate to so I never perceived it as that compelling as a org in its own right. There may of course be regional differences.

I really liked Frowner's 40 and thought that she got at both important ideas and emotional truths.

Without fun, the outcome is supposed to be what motivates us to take on these unpleasant tasks... but even the illusiary reward at the end of the struggle has been watered down. (Though I also admit that some of the change might be because I'm no longer being recruited and advertised to grow the movement -- so maybe it's not the rewards that have changed, just that frank and realistic outcomes are being presented instead of inspirational rainbows.)

It seems like the current calls are for white people to give up more and get less, which is going to be a harder sell. The same vision of equality guides us, but at the end we're not promised our children standing hand-in-hand, but instead we'll gain self-determining allies who will organize for still greater rights and social power. Which is great, and a nice coalition... but when all that organizations can promise for impossible to imagine victories is a different style of ongoing division, it's a lot harder to sacrifice family and friends. Especially since there's no dance party to celebrate any of the small victories along the way.

So, long way to winding up in the same bucket as 87 and 88. There's also a weird push away, with my allies telling me that they're tired of running 101 classes to welcome new people in, don't want us (particularly white guys) to speak other than to repeat their message, and they want to be paid for their speech. At that point, the constraints on effective -- much less fun-- action are so thick that it is difficult to remind myself that we do have the same goals. But noping out is easier and easier, particularly since friendships are tricky to build under strict constraints.

Second 92 on the check-in thread

I'm so flaky, I forgot altogether about check-in threads. Let me get one up!

Because I'm not very good at not thinking of how things affect me personally, I think the motivation to keep going as a liberal is pretty strong from the point of self interest. The brand for white dudes, without other qualities listed, has really taken a hit in the past few years. The whole taint of racism and sexism and unfair privilege was always there, but the unfair privilege is there too and it's hard to argue against. However the past four years have just been a constant stream of white men loudly yelling about being white men and engaging in whiny special pleading and toddler-level ranting about everyone but me-me-me. It's obviously mostly a political problem and one that hurts others far worse then it hurts me. However, I find it impossible to take without wanting to do what I can to boost all the other identities I have. Identity is socially constructed and I want to construct one that includes me, doesn't include the chicken-fuckers and doesn't require me to say aloud that I'm not a chicken-fucker to keep people clear about things. Is that too much to ask?

101: Right. I've been cranky in this thread, but regardless of any rhetoric anyone uses, I am highly motivated to do what I can in terms of anti-racism just because it is so miserable living in a country where our current level of racism is a live issue.

Seconding 101/102 and, on that note

Hate crimes rose to their highest numbers in a decade, with a record-breaking 51 fatal attacks, according to an FBI count released Monday.

The FBI's annual hate crimes report for 2019 shows that the overall increase was slight - not quite 3% - but the offenses were more violent than in previous years. It was also the third consecutive year with more than 7,000 hate crimes reported - a trend not seen since 2008.

I feel like people are reading 101 too generously .

Not exactly being generous, just saying that the only way to getting what you want is to bitterly and selfishly do what you can to make the world a better place.

Or to work for an especially vicious form of classism that isn't centered on race. But that's probably even less likely to work.

The whole taint of racism and sexism and unfair privilege was always there,

The biggest assholes use their whole taint.

Well, I'm old and cranky. And there's a certain kind of smug, self-satisfied sanctimony that really rubs me the wrong way, whether it comes from the Evangelical Right or from the Twitter-activist Left.

Also: what Charley said in 89.

Thanks, Cyrus. I'm glad it resonated.

I'm genuinely confounded and concerned that so many people whose opinions I respect deeply in this thread seem to have such a different experience of the current world that I do. I think highly of Charley, Walt, Jane, LB, and so many others who are commenting, but the world you're describing doesn't jibe with any of the activists I interact with nor the critiques that I experience (or even read).

E.g., someone saying "white feminism is the worst" doesn't in any way convey to me that they think Nazis aren't actually a worse problem, or that they won't band together with white feminists to fight Nazis. It just conveys that there are myriad ways in which their everyday lives are negatively impacted by white feminists, probably even more so than Nazis at the moment. It's a hyperbolic way to communicate a level of pent-up frustration and grief and anger that they spend so much of their lives having to navigate around (say) the Witts of the world, not a literal ranking of the greatest threat to their continued existence on the planet.

(IIRC Issa Rae's show has a good arc on this with her white nonprofit boss, but I've only seen one episode and am going off of others' reports.)

I don't have to keep hammering away at this since I've said plenty in this thread, but it pains me to be at such odds with so many decent and caring people. All I can imagine is that we're just having REALLY different interactions, both online and off.

Forgot I wanted to heartily co-sign this from Cala:

I believe a lot of political interaction depends on trust rather than information, and so it's probably more effective just to be out in the community being a little political than to be a traditional activist for most people. I'm not sure it scales, but there is something to the collapse of third spaces contributing to the collapse in democratic epistemic norms.

and this from Frowner:

I think that people who are one up on the social ladder (whether that's white people, men, straight people, etc) really, really underestimate how important it is to have teachers, doctors, social workers, co-workers, union leaders, etc who are from your background. It's not just a matter of representation or formal knowledge or "getting along"; there's just deep culture/knowledge/patience stuff that is so baked in that it can almost never be replicated by someone not from that background. And I think that one-up people tend not to realize how they talk to/act around one-down people, even when it's totally unconscious and unintended - with literally the most kindness and the best good will in the world. It is for these reasons, I think, that people get frustrated when one-up people take all the teaching/social work/etc jobs.

I don't have to keep hammering away at this since I've said plenty in this thread,

Please continue.

In the context of your 110, I'd say two things. (1) Of course there are annoying critiques one can read online. But that doesn't really matter. The place where I feel the tension most strongly is when I think about that question of building trust and trying to engage people politically on that basis of trust. I'm conscious of the fact that doing so with people I disagree with politically is quite likely to involve a certain amount of ignoring things, and being willing to talk about issues from a perspective which I know would feel objectionable to the people that I know who are most inclined to criticize white privilege -- that is to say, on some level, that having the conversation in a way that builds trust often involves having it in a way that is willing to take a certain amount of privilege for granted, and accept it as legitimate.

I'm an adult, that's a manageable tension.

But the point at which I become most frustrated at criticisms of white people are the moments when I think, "I would like to do what they are asking and talk to white people about these issue and, on some level, taking this critique seriously makes it more difficult to do that."

I agree with Megan that encountering that dynamic doesn't mean that anybody's wrong, and that the appropriate response is to just accept it and keep doing one's best. But it is a real enough experience that it's worth being able to acknowledge and discuss.

Witt -- I can never remember exactly what you do for a living, but as far as I do recall "non-profit professional", at least in part serving communities of color is pretty close. The critique in the original post is, as far as I can tell, identifying you, pretty specifically, as someone in a position where white women are counterproductive.

I don't think you should have your feelings hurt by that critique, and, as been discussed at great lengths in the thread, I can see reasons why people, particularly women of color, would feel and talk that way. On the other hand, it doesn't sound to me as if you're taking it to heart and considering rearranging your professional life so as to leave space for your role to be occupied by a woman of color while you work within your own community. You may be understanding about this kind of critique, and willing to listen to it sympathetically as hyperbole, but you're not going to take it seriously enough to take action on its basis.

That seems to me like a position that has a lot of contempt from you in it: understandingly and supportively sympathizing with a critique you're going to ignore as it applies to you seems to me like infantilizing the speaker. Straightforward disagreeing, where you do have disagreements (such as whether it's a problem for you individually to be doing the job you're doing) seems to me to be more respectful.

But these are different understandings of how rhetorical positions work. It might ease your feeling of being at odds with other people here if you reflect on how the positions you're taking can be read as contemptuous even if that's not your intent or beliefs. Given that possibility, it should seem equally possible to you that whatever you're reacting to in other people's posts -- which is a little unclear to me -- is also not fundamental to the intent or beliefs of the posters.

LB says:

reflect on how the positions you're taking can be read as contemptuous even if that's not your intent or beliefs

Speaking for myself, and with the proviso that that "contempt" might be too strong a word: I think the Facebook entry in the original post is straightforwardly wrong. I don't think Ali/cia San/chez G/ill has a useful way of regarding white liberals, or that she represents a view that people ought to aspire to. There are two ideas from ASG that I disagree with: That white liberal women ought to disengage from professional roles in disadvantaged communities, and that white liberal women are responsible for the behavior of white nonliberal women.

(This is an uncontroversial view here, right?)

Witt says this:

but the world you're describing doesn't jibe with any of the activists I interact with nor the critiques that I experience

And that speaks to my experience also. I will say even more strongly: I have a lifetime of unearned privilege, and a lifetime of minority folks and women being very good sports about it.

ASG has a point of view that I think is 1.) incorrect, 2.) understandable and 3.) has no impact on my life. So I can't really get worked up about this. (Mark Twain: "It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you." Heebie in the OP plays the role of MT's friend.)

Is my view here reasonably described as "contempt"? Maybe! It's condescending, for sure.

Like ASG, I am vexed by massive unearned privilege, but my main beef with Donald Trump or Charles Koch or whoever is that they achieved their privilege with despicable methods and use it to horrible ends. It'd be nice if they gave all their money to promote decency among white men, but the fact that they won't do that isn't what pisses me off about them. And it'd be okay with me if they had chosen to be teachers in low-income schools.

Right, I don't think your disagreement with ASG is contemptuous at all. I'm a little confused by Witt's position, because it seems to me to combine offense at disagreement with ASG with substantive disregard of what ASG is actually saying, and that's where the apparent contempt comes in.

In my day-to-day life, I don't have difficult interactions with activists -- everyone I interact with on issues around racism is pretty easy to deal with.

114: I'm not entirely persuaded that you are accurately representing Witt's view, but your comment was interesting to me because I think it's a pretty reasonable gloss on my own opinion.

I discuss my "contempt" for ASG in 113. My beef with the folks here is that I take them to be roughly socioeconomically similar to me, and people like me need to be gracious about ASG-style resentment, even when it's not entirely rational. This is what I was getting at in 41.

Witt is modeling graciousness. Without endorsing ASG overall, Witt chooses to emphasize the places where ASG's general viewpoint actually does intersect with reality. (See 34 or 37, for instance. Subsequent comments by Witt seem to be elaborations on those, and aren't endorsements of ASG's original thought.)

That's how I'd square that circle, anyway. I don't want to speak for Witt.

people get frustrated when one-up people take all the teaching/social work/etc jobs.

I don't know about social work but nobody is "taking" jobs from anyone in a profession with record high turnover and chronic shortages. The jobs are waiting if you can figure out how to get more minorities to enroll in teaching programs.

Right now I cannot bring myself to recommend teaching to any of my students, although I won't actively dissuade them, either.

Witt generally models graciousness.

I only see hyperbolic distaste for do-gooder white women online. In real life, I've only seen enthusiasm for any good acts, no matter the source. Maybe behind the scenes, there are people saying 'I wish she'd spent that same energy converting white racists'. But I've only seen this idea expressed online.

From what I've seen with our department social workers if you want more minorities you need to lower the education requirements and up the salaries. Make a baseline social worker an Associates with a cert. As it stands the minimum is a BA and often they want a Masters and then pay them like 40-50K. Of course that system is going to skew financially well off white people. That's who can afford it.

There's something I'm curious about. The ASG thing on Facebook could have been posted by the third party friend in two different ways: As an endorsement of the sentiment, or as an effort to rile up the rubes.* Which was it?

*Note that I am not accusing heebie of either thing. There is no implied endorsement, and the Unfoggetariat is not composed of rubes.

I feel like most jobs in my town require a masters degree and start at under $40K. It's complete insanity. Of course here it's that we have an oversupply of highly educated people, and many of those jobs end up going to PhDs. But I also think that there's a general phenomenon where the professionalization of HR has lead to overly specific job advertisements. If you put in really specific requirements then HR has more power in terms of getting to make decisions despite completely lacking the relevant knowledge, rather than the power going to the people doing the actual hiring. It's killing academic majors, because so many jobs are like "must have a bachelor's (or preferably a masters) in music radio journalism" and so not only have you excluded everyone without an advanced degree, you've also excluded everyone with a normal degree.

Witt saying she's disappointed in me is exactly the right amount of shame to induce reflection, and, hopefully, better behavior. Thanks for that.

to jw. I am you're cousin I think,

The ASG thing on Facebook could have been posted by the third party friend in two different ways: As an endorsement of the sentiment, or as an effort to rile up the rubes.* Which was it?

I think it was just posted out of anger, looking at the breakdown of who voted for Trump. As in, "I can't believe I let white women fool me yet again into thinking they were in my corner."

I don't think the person would say that white women are a monolithic entity with a single lockstep identity, but she might also say that she can never be quite sure that any white woman is actually trustworthy and not just saying all the right things.

Sorry for being AWOL, I had annoying e-mail problems all day (thanks, Microsoft, for the unannounced "upgrade" that broke my ability to have my mail sent to Gmail! Way to confirm my original decision). Anyway, finally resolved now, notwithstanding an irritatingly unproductive day.

On the other hand, it doesn't sound to me as if you're taking it to heart and considering rearranging your professional life so as to leave space for your role to be occupied by a woman of color while you work within your own community. You may be understanding about this kind of critique, and willing to listen to it sympathetically as hyperbole, but you're not going to take it seriously enough to take action on its basis.

This is kind of tricky, actually. I think the disconnect that you're identifying is real, but I think I'm pretty clear-eyed about routinely pausing myself to see if I'm actually taking steps in accordance with what I claim to value. To wit:

1) Am I paying close attention to the explicit criticism AND the nonverbal messages I'm getting from colleagues of color, indicating I may have inadvertently done something hurtful, and taking immediate steps to remedy this? (I screwed up massively earlier this year and still feel bad about it.)

2) Am I keeping an eye out in meetings, collaborative work, and event planning to see if my fellow white women are offloading actual or emotional labor inappropriately on to WOC, and interrupting that process?

3) Am I capitalizing on opportunities to engage with and redirect "benevolent" racism and otherwise problematic behavior by my fellow WW to the best of my ability?

4) Am I handing off high-profile or interesting opportunities as much as I reasonably can?

(Now "reasonably" is doing a lot of work there -- I haven't literally given up my actual job. But I do fairly regularly defer speaking engagements, grant review opportunities, etc. to WOC who don't have my professional seat at the table. It's actually gotten easier to do this in the past couple of years, as racial equity has become something that a lot of corporations and funders feel pressure to Do Something or at least Look Like They Are Doing Something about. I used to get WAY more pushback from my bosses about why I should accept invitations for the sake of "organizational positioning."

Of course, the other part of the problem is that sometimes the high-visibility opportunities don't come with MONEY, so you have to be working at a well-resourced org or able to take the time to do them, which is of course less possible for many WOC due to the racial wealth gap, which gets back whether I should have this job in the first place....)

Fifteen years ago, I did actually make a higher-stakes decision. I asked the hiring manager who was offering me a job if she really wanted me, as a white woman, in that particular role. If she said no, I was prepared to walk away from a job I otherwise wanted, but I can't make this out to be any kind of sacrifice -- I already had quite a good job at the time, so I wouldn't have been suffering.

That seems to me like a position that has a lot of contempt from you in it: understandingly and supportively sympathizing with a critique you're going to ignore as it applies to you seems to me like infantilizing the speaker.

I don't see it that way (maybe I wouldn't, though!). To me it's more like "acknowledging that she's right, but that I don't have a short-term opportunity to transition into a different type of job that would nevertheless support me". I do think about it very regularly though -- that is, what do I want in my next org and how can it better represent what I claim to think is important. In the meantime, I'm wrestling with #1-4 above daily, and probably screwing up at least that often.

Charley, that's more than generous of you. Thanks.

white liberal women are responsible for the behavior of white nonliberal women.

Just to clarify, in my novella above, I'm no taking responsibility for their behavior, I'm taking responsibility for interrupting and redirecting their behavior (especially since they are less like to get prickly and defensive at that coming from me rather than from a WW). Subtle but very importtant difference.

From me rather than a *WOC, that is. Time for bed, clearly!

to jw. I am you're cousin I think

Weird outtake from Empire Strikes Back.

Witt-- I didn't mean to suggest that you weren't living up to your own principles; I'm sure you're doing more good for anti-racism than I am. I was just, a little impatiently, trying to address your feelings of being at odds with other commenters here, by pointing out that your response to the statements in the original post wasn't all that dissimilar to anyone else's: sympathy with the underlying concerns, but an understanding that the specifics of the post (like the strong implication that you should remove yourself from your current professional position) were not necessarily realistic or productive.