Wednesday, July 26th, 2017 Donald Trump announced that the United States would no longer be allowing Transgender citizens to serve in the Army. A statement which has since been retracted. However, with that announcement, came, (in my opinion), unprecedented amounts of outrage from White Americans that I know personally, and only online through their twitter handles. There was one snap chat story that I viewed which read “Don’t get me wrong, I do support Trump, but I won’t if he goes through with this because now he’s harming people that matter.” People. That. Matter.
Seeing as how President Trump has both verbally and figuratively assaulted almost everyone at some point as a result of them being either a person of color, a woman, disabled etc. this only leaves the LGBT+ community untouched and as the “people that matter.” But more specifically both white trans and cisgender people that are a part of that group. There is no way to not bring in the characteristics of race as a part of this discussion because race dialogue in the LGBT+ community is often muzzled. Thus a question must be asked: would there have been the same response if Trump had said he was only going to ban black transgender people from serving in the army? Perhaps you’re squinting at that asking yourself why I would even pretend like there wouldn’t be outcry, but you don’t have to. If white people that voted for the man who has attacked people of color did not have a problem with him until he was unfair to a group that encompasses them too then it is not bizarre to ponder such a thought.
Of course, this is where my argument gets sticky because who would deliberately say “All Lives Matter” but additionally who would allow for the picking and choosing of helping which oppressed groups to proceed. The “Oppression Olympics” are a game no one should play — similarly, however, no one should be thrashing with cries of “equity” and “equality” if they are using those words as goals for only certain people, and not everybody (especially if those people are already reaping societal benefits as the result of being the home of a low melanin count).
How is it that things are only a problem when the problem could affect your community? This unfortunate example of a mindset hurts people in mass quantities to the point where they have to spend years rebuilding their communities. Beyond that, this passive ideology streamlines normality to those who are unapologetically virulent about their prejudices because you are acting on those same prejudices with a supposedly insidious approach. And in the year 2017, it is too simple minded to not be intersectionally aware of the world that you live in and instead be following the diluted dictates of white feminists like Taylor Swift, and Lena Dunham. You’re listening to people who say that they fight for all women while covering a black woman’s mouth because she’s angry.
When maxims like “people that matter” are allowed to aerate into the world people begin to forget that saying “Black Lives Matter” is not the erasure of white people’s lives, is the signaling that certain lives are being lost at far too high a rate to ignore them when compared to statistics of police related deaths in other communities.
I want to see that same protesting, Instagram posts, snapchat videos, and tears from my community (and the world) at all people’s oppression. Often when you liberate one group they become the next set of oppressors. So with that in mind, it can be logically assumed that no work is done in terms of defeating discriminatory abuse on a global scale when you ignore other’s but become self-proclaimed martyrs for other groups.
In his 1968 work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Brazillian philosopher, Paulo Freire denotes the difference between false charity and true generosity in relation to oppressed people when grouped together:
This may all seem hyperbolic to those who have a narrow worldview, but to those who have the easily attainable ability to see beyond themselves, it’s just reality.
