Anonymous asked: Do you expect white women to teach non white men about sexism and gay whites to teach homophobic non whites about homophobia? Or is this exemption only for white racists because your relatives are white supremacists and you want sympathy for them.
I don’t expect anything of anyone who isn’t able and willing.
What I do think is that people who would be relatively safe doing so should put in the effort to educate and combat bigotry, because there are a lot of people out there starting to question the bigotry inherent in our society and would absolutely be able to be educated if someone was there to do so.
I’m not expecting folks to put themselves in danger and try to rehabilitate klansmen. What I do think folks should be doing, if they are able, is talking to their coworkers and neighbors about social and political issues in terms that they haven’t been conditioned to immediately shut down.
I’ll own that my post wasn’t well-put and it comes off as a shitty take, okay? I wish I’d worded everything better. But I stand by what I said insofar as rural folks are a lot more willing to listen than people think, if someone is willing to put in the work. It puts a bad taste in my mouth that organizers are so willing to write off entire regions that are perfectly able to be educated, just because, “oh, rural rednecks are all idiots who can’t change.”
And as far as the wanting sympathy for my relatives crack, the ones who did refuse to listen to me and unlearn their bigotry have been cut off and I don’t really give a shit about them.
Building a movement takes work, and some of the most important work is engaging with and educating people who are politically backward. Those of us who are able to have got to weaponize our privilege and perform that work. If we have no education, agitation, or outreach, then we have no movement, and them’s the brakes.
A guy I know once said “while we bemoan then, the fascist recruits them.”
We can’t build a movement by telling everyone to fuck off until they’ve read Marx. That’s the best way to guarantee that they never join a movement.
You know who’s really really patient about explaining their viewpoint? Fascists and the far right. You know who has adjusted their messaging to reach out to people across regions and political views? Fascists and the far right. If we want there to be a survivable movement at all, we have to counter-recruit people, and that means being patient, and that means not bemoaning that our culture is bigoted and everyone who lives in it is a bigot.
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