White People Should Listen More
In 2015, I was 12, and Trump and Hillary’s race for the presidency was unfolding. Ever since then, I have been involved in activism in one way or another. I started off attending marches and rallies for women’s rights, then for gun control, again for BLM, and yet again for Palestine. I was simply a participant in the beginning, angry that women were seen as unfit for a presidency, or that children like me were being shot in school. As Black Lives Matter marches began to unfold after the murder of George Floyd, I was faced with a new sort of activism.
The issues of women’s rights and gun control instilled fear in my everyday life growing up. As a girl and a student, I had skin in the game. For me, these issues served as a good introduction to advocacy because I would feel them weigh on my day-to-day life. I can’t even count how many times the classic trope of being called “bossy” for exhibiting the same traits my male counterparts, who were called leaders, played out in my classes growing up. I remember my mom picking my brother and me up from school early the same day the shooting at Sandy Hook happened. These issues tangibly affected my life.
On the other hand, police brutality didn’t and doesn’t affect me in the same way these issues did. I will likely, hopefully, never meet the same fate as Trayvon Martin, Andre Hill, Broenna Taylor, Philando Castile, and many other Black Americans. Because I wasn’t directly under threat, due to my whiteness, my role in the movement changed. I was no longer the one being ridiculed and threatened, in fact, it was white people who were ridiculing, threatening, and worse: killing. I had to reevaluate the role that I was to take. Part of this revaluation was finding a balance between participation and stepping back. Using my place of privilege, as a white person, to amplify Black voices was a huge part of my adaptation. Arguably more important than amplification, active listening has proven to be critical. Taking in these perspectives, and doing serious introspection helped me find and fix my shortcomings as a white advocate in a movement for Black people.
Introspection requires that you evaluate why you are participating in a movement. From my experience, there are plenty of people involved in movements simply because they want to be revolutionary, not because their heart is in it. I think where some white people can get lost is when they are caught up in performative activism. Concepts like the white savior complex address this phenomenon. Activism for some, especially white people, can become about proving they are a good person by being vocal, not because they actually care. It can be more about self-soothing the guilty feeling, than a genuine willingness to take action. When allyship becomes theatrical, it’s time to do some introspection.
At the same time, it is important to have grace with people. Everyone is learning how to be in these spaces, and most people have good intentions. However, at some point in our activism journeys, we have all needed guidance, correction, or redirection. I have especially learned this through my role in student organizing.
I am currently the secretary of my university’s chapter, Students for Justice in Palestine. I transferred to Cal Poly last fall, with the chapter only being active for one quarter prior. We had little structural organization and frankly, my first term was a bit of a mess. Although we aim to have a horizontal leadership structure, I and a few other individuals found ourselves stepping up to create more order and definitive roles for our members. As a white person in this space, I am constantly asking myself if my role in whatever I am participating in is appropriate. I am very conscious about how to avoid overstepping and misrepresenting Palestinians. Similarly, I think white people can sometimes act with the colonial mindset that they know best, and therefore justifying overstepping.
The Middle East, since the beginning of Western imperialism, has been told by colonial forces, “Trust me, I know better than you.” This began when the Western idea of modernity was imposed on the region and it was divided into British and French mandates and later nation-states. Because their standards of life were different, and therefore seen as inferior, countries like Britain, France, and later the US stepped in to “bless” them with the gem that is Western modernity. This theme of white people swooping in, thinking they are saving the day, is recurring in many different movements and many fellow student organizers have struggled with ambitious but misguided white people.
This is why the amplification of the voices of the movement is all the more important! White people should never be at the forefront of a movement about the liberation of black people from the shackles of systemic racism, or Palestinians from Israeli apartheid and genocide. Highlighting people directly affected by a movement is not only vital for a movement to survive with the potential to last, but it also helps foster genuine relationships rooted in mutual respect and shared goals. With this, an attitude of ongoing unlearning, growing, and reshaping our views is critical to engaging humbly and authentically in activist efforts.
I encourage everyone to organize within their communities. With Trump recently becoming president, this is all the more important. Noam Chomsky reminded me of the power we hold when he said: “You don’t have to talk truth to power. You don’t have to tell the CEO of ExxonMobile that the use of fossil fuels is going to destroy humans, he’s known that for 40 years. You have to talk to the powerless… What you have to do is try to get the powerless to think for themselves.” Individualistic societies, where we believe we owe nothing to our neighbors, where we all must pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, cultivate the perfect environment for fascism to flourish. Talk to your neighbors! Volunteer! Create a coalition for a shared goal, and work towards it! Join a labor union! Spend time at your local library! Taking care of one another is how we combat the American attitudes that divide us. As a white person, listening to other perspectives is especially integral to my role in social movements and in countering the polarizing sentiments we face. We all have more in common than we realize.
