Marissa Johnson: a generation of activists who believe in disruption

[F4lconF16]

35. I posted this a little while back:

When someone says to you, 400 years of oppression, they do feel the weight of 400 years on their shoulders. How could they not? The people who called us white folk in Seattle "white supremacists" (and I am one of them) do not see us in "the most convenient terms, the simplest definitions". Believe me--I've actually met and discussed things with Janae.

When you look out on a Seattle crowd, at a sea of white faces, who don't understand the reality you face in the slightest, who are on a broad scale ignorant of your problems (and in being so helping to cause those problems); when you see the result of hundreds of years of oppression and racial discrimination, and you know those hundreds of years have created the reality you must navigate now; when you know that those very same people have voted for and supported the regimes of the racist Seattle Police Department, the racist city council policies, the racist housing development, the plethora of subtle and often overlooked structural racism inherent to your city and ignored by your neighbors; how can you not feel the weight of that oppression come crashing down on you?

In many ways, if not consciously, we are white supremacists. Not in our actions; we can be some fantastic human beings participating and fighting in the struggle against racism. But in our ignorance of the issues that are literally the very meaning of life or death to black America...we are creating a world for white people alone. The colorblind racism of mass incarceration and the new racial caste system that has evolved from it is a perfect example, and one of many to be found.

Respect must go both ways. And we need to understand that what is said and what we hear are often two very different things.

Edit: this was covered in the article, and is a critical thing we need to understand in order to be allies.

Throughout most of the April panel, Johnson spoke engagingly. Then, during the question-and-answer period, a white member of the audience said that he was put off by Johnson’s use of the term “white supremacy.” He preferred the phrase “white privilege.”

Johnson snapped. “Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever tell oppressed people how they should resist their oppression,” she said during a tongue-lashing that lasted several minutes and included her admonishing the man to stop smiling and refrain from speaking further.