‘When White People Say They’re Progressive’ – The Perfect Reply to Fake Allies

June 25, 2016 / J Mase III

“I hear ‘progressive’ as my obituary.”

Silencing, stereotyping, and disregarding people of color – that’s not what “progressive” white people do, is it?

Many white progressives claim to be anti-racist allies. But there’s something very off with the way they often go about trying to prove that they’re not racist.

The problem can be hard to point out, because it’s often so subtle and insidious – and because these same “allies” frequently respond by centering themselves and their defensive feelings.

In this fantastic piece, poet J Mase III captures exactly what this feels like for people of color.

By translating what he hears when white people tell him they’re progressive, he points out what so many of us go through with white folks who care primarily about whether or not we see them as “nice” – “nice being the operative word, and far more important than justice.”

We really appreciate this – and we hope it can help people recognize that you have to be more than a complacent ally in order to change the racist systems we’re living with.

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism

Click for the Transcript

When white people tell me they are progressive

what I really hear is

“yeah

I smile real big at Black people on the bus sometimes”

I hear

“My vote really does matter”

I hear

“I like to listen to NPR on the weekend

while tipping my Brown waiter 25% at brunch”

HaHaHa

What I don’t hear is

familiarity

I see red wine stained teeth

pleading for me to see them as nice people

Nice being the operative word

and being far more important than justice

My neighbor calls my new neighborhood in the Pacific Northwest

“Paradise“

I hear

“Genocide really does work“

I hear

the sound of my sneakers

tip toeing late at night as not to spook my neighbors’

whitest sensibilities

I hear

red and blue and yellow garden flowers

I’ve never been allowed to lay my eyes on til now

whispering

that I truly am an intruder into my own home

I hear

Black Muslim teenager pushed off high school building

I hear

white silence

I hear

white noise

Only the TV is the political system

and I can’t reach in deep enough to turn it down

I hear

“We’re real progressive”

I hear

me screaming to be seen

at white folks

that only see nice

That are more offended by my usage of the word fuck

then the fact that the police pulled a gun on me last week for laughing too loud while Black

I hear

wasted sentiments of “I can’t believe that still happens“

I hear

progressive

as my obituary

I hear

white mouths

spitting the politest of bullshit

thinking their words alone must matter

to me

I see them

eyeing me up

wanting me to recognize them

for their virtues

but

Anger is a fucking virtue

It is a survival technique

I forged the vilest of my ire

with the help of my dead ancestors

that Becky’s nice progressive grandparents killed off years ago

I planted it far beyond Pluto

So even the most committed of colonizers

can’t gentrify it yet

“I see no color”

They spew while sitting

In the whitest of board rooms

In their ivory cul de sacs

In their book clubs

and preaching about white Jesus from their Sunday morning pews

“We’re all working for the same thing“

they say

while blocking the path to my entry

I hear

the median access to wealth for a white woman in the US

is somewhere near $42,500

and that for a Black woman in the same country it is only 500 bucks

Yet I hear progressives

spending more time talking about their fragile white feelings

and corporate candidates

than the redistribution of their own stolen wealth

I hear

“Black people are so angry”

I wear that shit like a vest

Cause ain’t no one gonna tell me

liberal fantasies ain’t dangerous

I ain’t your Tulsa Oklahoma

I ain’t your Saartjie Baartman

I ain’t the Tubman on your $20 bill

I’m still alive to call you on your shit

And trust

It Is My Duty

To Fire Back

Assalamualaikum

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J Mase III is a Black/Trans/Poet based currently in Seattle by way of NYC. He is founder of the trans & queer people of color talent agency, awQward. A full length copy of his book, And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment & Inappropriate Jokes About Death will be out later this summer. To find out more about his work, find him on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, www.awQwardtalent.com!