It’s Over… Or is It?
A post-election guide for white people on the left (and beyond) — Part I
November 7, 2020
Four simple reminders for how we handle what’s next.
Ok. I 100% understand the impulse to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we don’t have four more years of the fascist monster leading a militant HALF of our country. Do that. Take your time to be relieved that the worst has been averted. The institutions of our country barely survived one term of this orange menace, you are right to have worried that there would be nothing left of any of them after a second term. Re-election absolutely would have validated his worst authoritarian impulses and we would have seen an escalation in violence — both from the state and from white supremacists now openly endorsed by the state (again). More people would inevitably have died, suffered, slipped into poverty, and been threatened and intimidated.
HOWEVER. There are some things to remember all around for white folx feeling relieved and celebrating. I want to be clear here, that none of these comments apply to the people of color whose labor, sacrifice, and erasure are very much central how the electorate pulled off a grotesquely narrow victory over outright fascism.
- Do not, under any circumstance, tell people of color how to feel or act right now.
This is not your place. And any impulse you feel about doing so is your internalized white supremacy. We are gonna reckon with that in the next post. We all have it. We can’t help it. It’s in the air we breathe in this world. So it’s best to just start coming to grips with it and observing it in our thoughts before we let those thoughts come out of our mouths and harm people of color. This means you make no comments about anger, their joy, tears of relief, rioting, protesting — NOTHING — from people of color. You shut your white mouth. - Do not ATTACK, belittle, or otherwise slight Kamala Harris.
As we say so often, representation matters. It’s not perfect. It doesn’t mean we are post-racial any more than the election of Barack Obama did. In fact, it may be very complicated and there may be valid critiques of Harris. NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR THEM. She has achieved something historic, and you need to let the symbolism of this be unadulterated by your white know-it-all superiority. We can both-and in this situation — QUIETLY. We can acknowledge that there are BOTH critiques AND reasons to celebrate this historic achievement for Harris. AND that neither of those things need our opinions right now. - Take care of yourself.
This doesn’t mean bubble bath and me-time. It also doesn’t mean doing any more harm to your liver than you’ve already done. It means it’s time to take seriously the fact that A. there is work to do and B. it will require you to be your best self. If you’re not in therapy, get there. If you’ve got trauma you haven’t worked on, start working on it — especially through body-based work. If you need medications get your script/refill. If you need help accessing any of these services, reach out because someone will help you. If you have troubled relationships with the world, family, or partners because of some messed up shit with your family of origin, now is the time to resolve your codependence, your anxious/avoidant attachments, your need for external validation, and whatever else it is that keeps you from looking at the world, seeing what needs to change, and DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Nourish your bodies. Move them. Feel your feelings. Process. Do all of that with the appropriate people and boundaries. Solidify your relationships (the ones that don’t harm you, obvs — create boundaries around the ones the do). You MUST do this work on the self before you can work on the world. - Buckle up, because shit is gonna get real ugly right now. You need to be ready to handle that (without all the shock that nice white people typically feel when fascists do what fascists do), and respond.
More on this soon, but let’s just end with asserting that winning the presidency does not erase all of the systems of violence and oppression that got us here, nor does it erase the fact that fully half of the electorate in many places voted for fascism. We are going to have to reckon with all of that, and soon. But for right now we need to expect the behavior of a petulant toddler that has metastasized to unbelievable proportions. He will throw the biggest, most violent tantrum between now and inauguration day. There may be bloodshed. There will certainly be damage. And we need to figure out how to respond to that in a way that upholds our democracy — the shreds of it that are left — without capitulating to the violent provocations of the other side. (Reminder — do this without telling people of color how they should respond…this is just for you white folx.)
I’m going to make a point to continue adding to this guide each day as we move forward from the election. Because now is not the time to feel like the battle has been won. It is a tiny but significant victory in the face of the oncoming struggle. Too many white folx aren’t familiar with the wisdom of Angela Davis — freedom is not an institution, created and then left to stand on its own integrity in perpetuity; “freedom is a constant struggle.” It is a practice in which liberation is sustained by the perpetual efforts of individuals to hold back the cresting wave of power that attempts to crash down and cover us all.
White people are too used to institutions doing most of that work for us, but activists of color — especially Indigenous peoples and black, queer feminists — will tell you that this work of striving for liberation is ongoing, exhausting, and impossible to sustain without support. Thus far, the “good white people” have done very little to acknowledge how they benefit from the way institutions shield them while failing to hold back the wave of oppression for non-white people. Even if you are marginalized in other ways, as a white person, there’s a certain amount of your existence that is less exhausting because you have not struggled to be humanized on the basis of your skin color.
So yes, I’m telling all white folks who are in solidarity or want to be with the coalitions of marginalized and oppressed people that what you have done thus far — what I have done thus far — is not enough. In this moment where you have time to breathe a sigh of relief, take a moment to rest and heal, but also wrap your head around your own responsibility to do more to dismantle the structures from which you benefit and lift the threat of oppression from those who do not have the same securities that a return to the old “status quo” would provide for you.
