A Donald Trump presidency is reasonably scaring many Americans. It’s like the sun is slowly approaching the Earth and we’re awaiting our inevitable heat death, but the sun is also tweeting insults at Civil Rights heroes. Every American is entitled to their own fears of what’s to come in the next four years, but there’s no reason for the privileged to be dominating the conversation. White women, and white feminism, are largely responsible for the election of Donald Trump, yet a majority of people given platforms to speak out against him have been white women.
The main group that will be targeted by Donald Trump and his supporters have been, and continue to be, people of color, especially women of color. Despite that, women of color have rarely been given the platforms to speak out against Donald Trump to a large amount of people. The blame can’t be simply placed on the people who are controlling the platforms, the people who accept those platforms are at fault as well. The white people who have been given the platform to speak against Trump and his administration shouldn’t be accepting those platforms. Instead, they should suggest a person of color be offered the platform instead.
The main goal of these self proclaimed “allies” should be to listen to minorities and amplify their voices. However, throughout the election season we’ve seen the voices of minorities be disregarded, suppressed, and policed. Then those same people had the audacity to call themselves allies and buy safety pins despite many minorities telling them not to do either. It’s not enough to simply call yourself an ally or believe that there should be equality: to be a proper ally, direct action and support is a requirement. Not just vocalized support and moral agreements, but actually standing beside minorities in their fight for equality.
It’s clear that many privileged people just want to help. While that sentiment is greatly appreciated, it’s nothing more than sentiment because most privileged people have no idea how to help. They’ve been trying to help since Donald Trump took the lead in the primaries and that didn’t help anyone. It’s about time for minorities to take the lead on this fight, since we’ve been the only ones able to actually to make a difference in this country.
With Donald Trump’s inauguration just around the corner, minorities shouldn’t have to fight a war on two fronts. Battling bigots is hard enough; battling bigots while “allies” are constantly interfering with and derailing dialogue is even harder.
Allies: remember that while the past few months have been especially hard for you, minorities have had to deal with much worse than this their entire lives.
While at times it may seem like the help of allies isn’t wanted, that’s not the case. Many minorities welcome the help of people with privilege, but not if it comes with conditions. Anything that isn’t directly helping the push for equality and justice isn’t needed or wanted in these movements, and allies should listen to minorities when we express this. There’s no reason we can’t both work together to fight against bigotry and injustice; the only thing that gets in the way is the ego and self centeredness of allies.
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