Over the last few months, I’ve been wanting to write about the Portland protests and racial justice, but I keep running up against a wall in my mind. I want my words to help and not harm. Especially as a white person, it would be easy to miss something and cause harm.
Nevertheless, I do think it’s worth exploring my thoughts here. I’ll be doing so in the coming weeks and months. This blog is where I explore what I think, and lately, what I’ve been thinking and talking about is the protests and racism.
And while I don’t claim any authority on racial justice, what I can offer is my experience having challenging conversations across difference, and my insight on how these conversations strengthen our country.
I’ve heard that one of the trademarks of America’s dominant culture, or white culture, is perfectionism. That’s certainly true of me. Like many people of northern European descent, I habitually strive for precision and have to remind myself when it’s time to loosen up. Although I feel anxious about causing harm in writing about these delicate subjects, I want to let go of trying to say everything in precisely the right way or attempting to please as many people as possible.
If I keep aiming for perfection, I’ll never publish anything I’ve written! So I’ll just do the best I can, keeping a measure of faith that my readers will understand my good intentions.
Now I’ve written several paragraphs that have little substance other than a disclaimer. But I do think this disclaimer is important. It relates to the theme I’ll address today: the tendency, among people on the left, to seek perfection in white allyship.
White allyship, as I understand it, is the effort of white people to support struggles for racial justice. There are many ways to be a white ally. You can show up to Black Lives Matter protests, promote the voices of people of color, or talk to other white people about racism, just to name a few.
But there are also ways that would-be white allies can detract from the movement. For example, it’s often unhelpful for white allies to “center” their own stories, words, or actions in ways that draw attention away from people of color, whose voices are most important.
I’d like to look closer at the concept of centering. This SNL skit about women’s empowerment illustrates the problem with “bad centering.” It’s pretty funny, though also kind of horrifying, to watch as the men in the skit talk about women’s empowerment without letting any of the women speak for themselves! When the voices of the oppressed are drowned out by the dominant culture, it’s hard for true change to take place.
In the last few months of nationwide and local protest, there’s been a lot of conversation on the left about centering. Is it helpful to spread photos of white police officers kneeling in support of Black Lives Matter? What about the startling photos of “Athena,” the anonymous, nude white woman who showed up to a Portland protest?
Most recently, the Portland Wall of Moms, a protest group of mainly white women, was rocked by accusations that its leadership was insensitive to the need for more voices of people of color. The group has been reborn under new leadership, as Moms United for Black Lives.
The concern about centering white voices has been one of my own hesitations about writing on this topic. Mine is yet another white voice.
I feel that it’s good to pay attention to centering. At the same time, though, I also believe progressives can go overboard with concerns about it, becoming perfectionist in its application.
In recent years, we’ve often formed “circular firing squads,” wielding our concern for people of color against each other. For white people who are new to the movement, it can be disheartening to be told not “thank you for showing up” but “you’re doing it wrong.”
Progressives tend to create standards for ourselves and each other about how to speak, protest, and generally be as a white person. These standards are often quite narrow. And sometimes, the messages about how to be a good white ally can be almost hopelessly confusing.
For example, one popular expression in the antiracism movement is “white silence equals violence.” Staying silent isn’t enough—white people need to use our privilege to speak out against oppression, rather than being complacent. That makes a lot of sense. The challenge that “silence equals violence” is part of what’s driven many thousands of white Portlanders to the streets this year.
But when you line this challenge up next to admonishments about centering, things get hazier. White people should show up and speak out…but not too loudly. They shouldn’t garner too much attention, which would hurt the cause. It feels as though the “good white ally” box thus shrinks, becoming a more difficult target to aim for.
I’ve encountered this difficulty in my own role as a protester. On the one hand, the fact that so many white people like me are showing up is being celebrated. This excellent New York Times article describes a generally positive impression among black protesters and protest leaders in Portland about the white protesters.
“I feel the most protected that I ever have in my city,” says a black protester named Damany Igwé. A black protest organizer named Xavier Warner calls the sea of white protesters “a beautiful thing,” and another black organizer named Teal Lindseth says the police “hurt us less when there are more people.”
But meanwhile, one of my own friends, who is a person of color, stopped going to the Portland protests because he felt turned off by the protests’ whiteness. He felt that some white protesters were being “performative,” too loudly proclaiming their support to each other. Meanwhile, others were acting too casual, as if protesting was just a fun excursion with friends. Still others were inappropriately using the Black Power fist, which he felt should be reserved for black people.
I understood what he was describing and was not surprised, and I greatly appreciated that he felt comfortable enough to confide in me. But I also blanched inwardly at a couple things he said.
I didn’t tell him, but I had recently stood in a neighborhood protest and chatted with friends. Ron and I hadn’t seen the friends in months because of the pandemic, and we’d been excited to see each other on the street.
And at another protest, I had sometimes raised my own fist with others when cars drove by. I had hesitated to raise it—I’d sensed that this gesture wasn’t mine to use. But when I saw other white people using it, I tried it out, and it felt like the best gesture to express the solidarity and passion I felt. A wave or a thumbs-up felt far too casual.
Now, hearing my friend’s reaction, I realized my use of the fist would indeed offend some people. So would my chatting, which had also felt vaguely wrong, but which I’d done anyway—it was hard to stand silently next to our long-lost friends. Even as I’d tried to be conscientious and avoid harm in my white allyship, I had still not been perfect.
I came away from the conversation with the vision of a tiny little box in which I’d need to exist if I wanted to be a good white ally at a protest. The box was smaller than I’d thought before. I should show up, but not chat or gesture. I should mainly just stand or walk quietly, holding my sign, expressing my solidarity in silence or through chants.
It might sound like I’m complaining about that restrictive image. Actually, once I envisioned it, I could feel that it probably was the right thing to do, the best way to be. Maybe there is an ideal way to protest as a white person, I thought. It’s just very, very precise.
But this line of thinking also speaks to my concern about perfectionism. The size of the box depends on who you’re talking to—my friend had been sensitive to many white protesters’ behavior, and I myself shared some of that sensitivity, but the black men and women in the article had focused more broadly, simply appreciating how many white protesters were showing up.
If I hadn’t talked to my friend and had only read the article, my box might have been bigger…and perhaps easier to fit into. This discrepancy makes trying to be a good white ally confusing.
Another illustration of my concern can be found in reactions to photos of kneeling police. I first saw one of these photos when a black friend, a passionate activist, shared it on Facebook. I “hearted” the photo, which had uplifted me too. Soon afterwards, I read an article about Spike Lee’s thoughts on the spring protests. He mentioned being “encouraged” by the many white people protesting, as well as by a photo of New York police officers kneeling. “They need to show the image more,” he said.
Then I saw the same photo shared by a white activist, one of the leaders of a progressive group in Portland. Soon after she posted the photo, she took it down, then she contritely apologized for having posted it.
Another white group leader had pointed out that the photo sent the wrong message: it centered white people, and it painted too rosy a picture of the police. With a heavy-sounding heart, the first activist sincerely apologized, at length, for any hurt she may have caused by posting the photo.
To me, that heaviness, and the pain she must have been feeling in making this public apology, felt overblown. I’m not sure what kind of communication took place between her and the other activist, but I’ve seen many progressives chastising each other for the “wrong” kinds of postings on Facebook. Considering that some black activists had also been inspired by the photo, her contrite apology struck me as a fairly extreme reaction.
I thought: Many people of color feel it’s encouraging that there are so many people of all colors wanting to support racial justice. Is sharing a few photos of white people doing the right things, or including a few white voices, really so terrible?
I worry that when we decide there’s only one very small way to be a white ally, we might be missing the forest for the trees. Yes, it’s good to be aware of centering. And yes, too many white voices can drown out the voices of people of color. And sometimes, there is an ideal way to be a white ally.
But other times, especially when it comes to specifics, people of color will disagree on what action feels best.
I’d like to see progressives, including myself, loosening up a little on what makes a “good white ally.” We should keep listening, and especially paying attention when many people of color are voicing the same concerns. But I’d also like to see more gentleness, less anxiety, and less rigidity.
Too often, white allies make assumptions about what all people of color will feel and jump on each other’s language or actions, or we’re hard on ourselves. Can we forgive each other for not getting it right? Can we recognize that there are sometimes different definitions of “right”? Can we let go of our perfectionism—which is, itself, an aspect of white culture?
We strive not to judge people of color for their responses to injustice, but meanwhile, we apply a mountain of judgment to ourselves. It’s as if, instead of letting go of our perfectionism and desire for control, we’ve merely funneled it into a new outlet.
I’ll leave this thought here for now. I’ll keep exploring it in upcoming posts. I plan to post about politics more often in the coming months—rather than once a month, I hope to write once every week or so. I hope blog subscribers don’t feel spammed! 🙂
Our national experiment has accomplished a lot, and we still have a ways to go. I hope my small voice will create a few more ripples in the pool, ripples that do more good than harm.
And I hope that one day, America will be truly great, for everybody.
