On white fragility, white spaces, and allyship

I'm in an introductory course for WGSS (Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) majors. I love the class. I love the professor. I mainly love the class because the professor isn't afraid to call shit out that makes it super radical and blatant to me, but still doesn't make white people cry (yet). I love the class because people are very adamant on calling out white fragility, white saviorship, and the centering of conversations on white individuals, rather than the Black and Brown theorists and experiences.  

But today was a different story.  

There's no walking around the fact that the majority of voices in the classroom are white. As a senior WOC, I honestly don't have anything to say. I'm here to learn. My silence speaks volumes and it has taken me quite a while to learn how to listen to learn rather than listening to respond.  

I wince every time a white person in the class talks about their feelings or how mortified they are about what's happening to marginalized identities (QTPOC, QPOC, WOC, poor women, immigrant/refugee women, underrepresented women in these white ass WMNS courses). But  there is always someone there to call it out. The conversation of centering conversations on white feelings was a topic that was talked about the first day of class; yet we continue to have these conversations/call outs of people centering the conversation on their white feelings and their fragilities.  

One person who is particularly vocal in the class (white), has been called out respectfully multiple times in the classroom by another white person. Today, they decided to talk to other people about it. Here is the conversation that took place immediately behind the two visible POC (of five) in the class.  

1) I'm afraid to talk in class because I'm just going to be told I'm talking about my feelings. This should be a space where we're able to talk about our feelings.  

2) The only time I'm okay with being called out is with the professor.  

3) Mockingly about the person who always calls white shit out: "Can I talk to you about how much better of a feminist I am than you?" 

You spoke. OUT LOUD. Directly behind me. You were asking for someone to hear you and chime into agree with you with your white solidarity and shit. Here it is.  

1) Be afraid to talk in class. Be afraid to FUCK UP. Because you will. This class isn't about you. This class is about the voices of womxn of colour who have been ERASED from women's studies and theories. This is not a place for you to talk about your feelings. This is not a space for you to talk about how guilty you are, how bad you feel about being white. It is UNPRODUCTIVE. It is pointing out the FUCKING obvious and it shows no critical thought to the topics of discussion other than GUILT. Be afraid to fuck up. Do something with your guilt. Analyze systems and why you feel guilty and how you feel guilty and what about that makes you feel guilty and KEEP. IT. TO. YOUR. SELF. 

ALSO. YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN SPACE TO TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS. JUST PUT IN THE WORK AND MAKE THAT SPACE HAPPEN. HAVE AN 11PM TALK SESSION TO TALK ABOUT YOUR WHITE GUILT WITHOUT BLAMING POC FOR IT. YOUR TALKS should not be at the detriment of POC and the wasting of their time. Yes. Your feelings waste my time. I don't care about your feelings.  

White spaces exist outside the door. Talk about racism out there. Make it a topic of discussion always. If POC have to live with knowing their skin colour every time they walk into the room, it is your obligation to talk about racism of WHITE PEOPLE all the time. Until people are tired of you talking about it the same way you're tired of being called out on it. Maybe you'd stop being called out and getting ur feelinz hurt if you reflected on what it means to be an ally, what times/spaces it is appropriate to talk about your white fragility. Look up Robin DiAngelo. Seriously, look. her. up. 

2) Totally agree that our professor is radical as fuck, is awesome, is great, is SO GOOD AT CALLING PEOPLE OUT. But if we're having the same fucking conversation about white-centered conversations on feelings, then there's only so much a professor can do. If our professor called people out on their bullshit all the time, you'd cry. The REASON you're being called out is because there is only so much our professor can do and how they can frame the words that they use to call you out. You dont' want to be called out by your professor. You just want someone to sugarcoat it.  

3) I'm pretty tired of having the same conversation every class period too.  It's not about whose feminism is better than someone else's feminism, it's about not being a piece of shit when someone calls you out on oppressive ways of taking up space in conversation.  

Lastly. People call you out because they care about your humanity. Or if they don't care about you, they care about the fucking impact you are having on the rest of the classroom by taking up space. That's what allies are supposed to do.  

Honestly, if you want, I can call you out. But you'll probably never talk again in the class which isn't actually something that I want to happen because I want you to fuck up and for some ally to call you out on it so you don't do it somewhere else where it will damage other people of colour. 

This is my personal opinion on you being called out in class: I have had no problem with it. I've spoken to 4 of the 5 POC in the class and the call-outs in class have been within reason. They have been the work of true allies and they have done the work that allies are supposed to do, that people of colour are TIRED of doing. 

POC anger is justified. I've been doing this for WAY TOO LONG to actually have the energy to call you out sometimes. Sometimes it's not worth the effort, it's not worth the energy. My energy is expended and white people doing the work of calling you out shouldn't anger you. You need to be angry at someone else. 

I don't care if this is your first WMNS course and that you come from a different perspective or past or whatever. It sounds like excuses to me. We've talked about almost it every single day since the beginning of the semester and if you haven't learned it by now, you're being intentionally ignorant, and that is VIOLENCE against the POC in this class. 

This is my warning for you to get your shit together. I won't be very nice when I call you out and if I am, you best be scared.  

To the UW System Board of Regents: We can engage with "controversial" discussions, we just don't discuss with ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS.

Dear UWEC Executive Staff/Chancellor’s Staff/Committee,

*CW: mention of rape 

You have heard the student body loud and clear these past few years. You have heard us shouting for your accountability to students, their safety, their education, and to the ways in which your institution has played into and upheld white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, classist and ableist education systems.

First of all, I don’t give a shit about your words. You have tainted once-beautiful words such as: diversity, validation, equity, diversity, inclusion, intersectionality—and have merged it into your brand as if you can stamp it on an institution and suddenly it is rendered all of these things.

Your actions have shown us otherwise. Your ignorance has cost you greatly. Our voices are loud and clear when they say that no one should be attending this university. You should be scared when it is your “””diverse””” population that is saying this to their peers, their siblings, their friends, their connections. Do not come to this university. Do not come to this school.

I don’t care about your PR stunts. I care about not being an afterthought. I care about not forcing students and faculty of marginalized identities to relive their trauma while you “experience” it for the first time, secondhandedly when we have to tear ourselves apart to educate you.

I don’t care that you “didn’t know.” I care about whether or not you are fit to be in the position you are in right now. I care about whether or not you are the best person for that position. If you must ask students “what do you want?” you have failed. You have not learned, you have not sought out learning, you have failed your students, and you have failed yourself.  

If you are worried about the well-being of your students who are white, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, financially stable and blablabla, go cry about it somewhere else. This revolution is AS MUCH about the privileged students on campus, as it is for the students of marginalized identities. Your responsibility is to educate your students on being lesser pieces of shit when they leave this university. You have failed miserably.

I don’t care about how “far” we’ve come. I don’t care that we have a “better” chancellor than the previous. I don’t care because that type of progression doesn’t do anything for people who will graduate with the idea that reverse racism exists. I don’t care because the same fucking shit that’s happened from BEFORE my time here is STILL happening here and on a grander scale since the election of our current president.

Which brings me back to the point of this post: Someone from your executive staff said to me that we could have prevented him coming to campus (but why would we not want him on campus?????—because we’re not a piece of shit university. Lol jk we are). The values that we have with our “EDI” initiative is also a standard. You did not uphold that standard and you failed your students, you failed their education, you enabled fascism on campus, and now you have to fix this fucking mess.

You owe it to students to tell them whether or not their dignity and absolute intolerance for nazism, white cisheteropatriarchal supremacy is welcome on this campus. You have a duty to tell students whether or not they will be punished for standing up against pieces of shit.

If you can’t even expel/”””punish””” students for being a fucking rapist, you don’t deserve to even fucking uphold this policy.

You also have a duty to tell students who you care about more—a policy that strips students the right to voice their concerns with pieces of shit on this campus, or your students, who have had their voices stripped from them systematically and institutionally from even before birth.

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire is only as great as its students. The students I have surrounded myself with are revolutionists. They have had their entire lives in the hands of executive staffs like you and they have been done wrong every time.

You’re not stupid enough to believe that this will actually stop students. Because it won’t.




(I am a part of and participate in a myriad of organizations but I do not represent them aka my perspectives are not their perspectives because my perspectives are my own and in no way "representative of" these organizations).