This story was originally published on Medium.
This photo — two women’s hands, one black and one white, gently intertwined — has long been one of my favorites that I’ve treasured up to this moment, nearly 14 years after it was taken. I’ve cherished it because it represents love and unity between two women transcending racial divides, a sentiment that remains powerful even more than a decade after that romantic relationship ended. But I’ve also cherished it because it evokes a dark, formative memory that will forever haunt me — and, more importantly, remind me that true unity and solidarity can’t be sustained by a fleeting moment of anger or an empty hashtag.
In 2006, when I fist voyaged off to college, I experienced my first romantic relationship with a woman and simultaneously my first interracial relationship. It was a time of freedom, of discovery — a most magical departure from the whitewashed upper middle class halls of my high school.
She was a queer black immigrant and had weathered more in her young life than most white people do in 10 lifetimes. As I soaked her life stories in, my assumptions about the world were peeled away like layers of an onion. With each revelation, I was horrified to discover how deeply racism and xenophobia permeated all parts of society around me and how heavily the odds were stacked against anyone who didn’t look like me and, even more so, the cis male members of my race.
Today, we are increasingly horrified to discover anyone who isn’t aware of all this. But there I was, 18 years old and so extraordinarily sheltered by the clouds I’d lived on. The grand ol’ USA wasn’t the place I’d learned about in history books, where racism was a relic of the past. No, in fact, it underpinned every structure holding up our country, from our police to our jails to our immigration laws to our schools.
She was patient. I was grateful. In our bubble, the world could still be filled with mystique.
Until the night that shattered my fragile utopian illusions and forever tarnished this photograph.
We were out with friends for a night on the town in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond, the place that embraced me as I learned to crawl and walk and earned my diploma near the top of my class. Richmond, also the home of the White House of the Confederacy, as well as the headquarters of the Daughters of the Confederacy (until this past week — bye!).
Richmond, where as white people congregate in ritzy corporate offices like Capital One and Dominion Energy (whose leadership teams are about 90 percent composed of white people, predominantly males), black people are often relegated to substandard housing and food deserts and fall victim to 90 percent of the city’s homicides (2015 data).
That evening, our hands were intertwined, swinging in the air, surrounded by laughter and the joys of newfound freedom. My hair flapped in the wind; her eyes were sparkling.
A car engine revved on the street behind us. As it sped past us, tires screeching, two piercing sounds silenced all others: “N-word!” followed by “F-word!” Inside were the silhouettes of young white males, cackling.
In her eyes, I saw the pain of generations of struggle bubble up to the surface. I saw rage and fear that I will never unsee.
I don’t remember her words, or my own. I don’t remember getting back to the dorms. Honestly, the memories of the aftermath have disappeared, replaced only by a solemn emptiness. I’m sure my brain has deleted it all in hopes of never having to process it again. In fact, I’ve hardly shared the experience with anyone over the years, preferring to try to forget it ever happened.
But that’s a problem. When we forget, we become complicit in atrocities.
When I reached out to my former girlfriend to ask for her permission in sharing this story, I prefaced my request with a feeble statement that I hoped she didn’t even remember the experience.
How could she not?
While I’ve actively worked to bury the trauma of that night, she has lived in her darker, beautiful skin every day, forced to endure not only that one crushing act of racism, but certainly many more — as well as thousands of microaggressions and subtle reminders, cemented into our very culture, that black people have a place in America, a place right below that of white people.
It is my privilege that I could choose to try to forget.
It is my privilege that I have only had to deal with racism when it is shoved in my face.
And perhaps even more so than the cruel boys who sped off into the night and forgot we even existed, that aspect of white privilege is a plague. It allows us to be comfortably silent, not quite racist — but not actively antiracist on a daily basis, in everything we do in our lives. Our privilege allows us to perpetuate a culture and a system that nurtured the hatred in those boys.
Before other white folks get their panties in a bunch, let me back up and say that calling us privileged isn’t an insult — it’s a fact. By birth, we haven’t had to worry about our livelihood being under attack because of our skin color. It doesn’t mean we haven’t had other struggles. It doesn’t mean those struggles don’t matter. But it does mean that if we want to be good, compassionate citizens who care about our neighbors, we have a duty to actively work against that privilege. We have to step outside ourselves.
I’d like to say that the experience that dark night immediately changed me, made me a better ally. But it would take years more for that. Maybe even up until today, as I’m writing this, I’ve gotten by without truly understanding the need for allyship and intersectionality in every single pursuit I embark on.
Growing up, I lived in an environment where incorporating one black person into a group under the guise of diversity was seen as enough. We tokenized other races and patted ourselves on the backs for a job well done.
Today, we white people are rightly outraged at the murders that have unfolded over the last several months and weeks. But where were we for the last 400 years of injustice? Sitting comfortably on our couches? And what are we doing about it now? Filling our feeds with hashtags and performative gestures.
As Marcus K. Dowling writes in a poignant piece entitled “Your White Guilt Is Taking a Toll on Your Black Friends” this week, “Posting 99.9% more times on Instagram about how you’re handling your sudden wokeness to Black anger does not overcompensate for a lifetime of relative inaction. No fund exists that can fundraise away your guilt.”
So what do we do, then? Ongoing, often unnoticed support without fanfare and social media likes — in everything we do. According to Holiday Phillips, “Simply ‘saying stuff’ is easy. You know what’s hard? Not buying stuff you want because the supply chain is violent. Turning down a job because the company employs child labor in Africa. Calling out other white people when they say something clearly racist. That shit is hard. But if you want to be a true ally to BIPOC, you have to be willing to do it. Anyone can post hashtags on social media. And the fact that this is seen as an act of activism is deadly.”
For white people, embracing true allyship means showing up every day, elevating underrepresented voices whenever we can, and listening without co-opting the dialogue. It means doing the reading and the hard work on our own without relying on our black family and friends, and asking other white allies for guidance when we don’t know the right path (because I know my black boyfriend now is exhausted and spent). It doesn’t mean we do this for two weeks after the murder of a black man at the hands of a cop and then go back to business as usual.
For white social justice advocates like me, who operate in spaces like animal and environmental protection and LGBTQ+ rights every day, it means intersectionality. Centering the struggles of all black, brown, immigrant, and other people of color in all the justice work that we do. For me, as an animal activist specifically, it means recognizing that the oppressive system that traps farmers in endless mountains of debt to fuel corporate greed, subjects slaughterhouse laborers to harrowing conditions, denies impoverished communities access to truly healthy foods, and abuses and kills animals is upheld by the same forces of injustice that lead to the murders of black and brown folks.
“We have to wrap our heads around the modes of thinking that were designed precisely to ensure certain humans, animals, and other nonhuman life remain outside our moral and social communities. This is not a precious, academic, intellectual activity. This is absolutely necessary for real change,” writes black vegan activist Syl Ko in Aphro-ism. Until justice and freedom are achieved for our fellow humans, they will never be extended beyond our species.
And as a queer woman, of course, this month I celebrate Pride Month. But many of us have never heard the names Marsha P. Johnson or Zazu Nova, two black trans women who were pivotal in the start of the Stonewall riots — a defining moment for our movement. Or Tony McDade, a black trans man recently murdered by police. It’s a fact that black members of the LGBTQ+ community are disproportionately affected by violence and hate crimes compared to their white counterparts. We cannot leave behind our black queer and trans brothers, sisters, and non-binary folks when we wave our rainbow flags.
Not just this month, but beyond, let’s honor their lives. Let’s say their names. And say them again. And, most importantly, let’s strive to actively remember and fight for them in everything we do, forever. If our role in Black Lives Matter begins and ends in 2020, then we have failed.
Photo credit: Seth Haley