Because that’s how it keeps going. I have tried time and time again to ignore the little danger signs from White people and kept getting burned by some, even by self-professed leftists. Not by all, of course, but by enough to be wary. It’s unpleasant; this hypervigilance around White people is a real burden and I wish it hadn’t been forcibly inflicted on me, but that’s what living in a White Supremacist society does.

I find it helpful to differentiate between “White” and “white” people.
Capital-W “White” means the person exhibits a lot of the toxic settler-colonial, imperialist, and casually racist behaviors that Amerikkkan society perpetuates.

Lower-case w “white” means the person has skin tones that make them look like the Capital W’s but they don’t do that shit. They’re actively antiracist, they’re vigilant and purge any trace of white supremacy from themself, they’re learning, and they support people of color in our fight against white supremacist fascism.

It’s not about skin color, and it’s not even essential to who they are – White people who rehabilitate themselves can become white people, that is, people whose skin is light but aren’t being toxic or shitty in any way.

A pretty basic litmus test I’ve found is checking how they feel about American Imperialism. If I say, “Joe Biden belongs in prison for what he did to Iraq” and they agree, then they probably understand on a visceral level that brown people are people. If they argue, that tells me they don’t actually value our lives – because it is fundamentally impossible to care about nonWhite lives and also be ok with any of these genocidal fucks.

The only white people i trust are David Gilbert, Judy Clark, and the United Freedom Front people.

I’ve also met plenty of opportunistic and full of shit non-white activists. Just FYI. don’t get conned.

But your instincts are correct. Most white people are not to be trusted to varying degrees.

I’m going to suggest a new thing called Terminal White Person Syndrome (TWPS) that’s more common among white people. Interpret that how you will.

When a person of color, especially if they’re black like me, affirms their support for causes such as queer liberation, feminism, animal rights, or socialism, I immediately feel that I can believe, with minimal doubt, that they’re truly convicted and principled in what they’re advocating for. However, when a white person claims to support leftism, until my skepticism is proven wrong, I immediately assume they’re a dishonest and performative libshit.

It depends, I do not trust any person of any race immediately when it comes to topics like LGBT rights or feminism for example. There are many homophobic and sexist people of all races. There are many performative people of all races. People are people, after all. However, when it does come to issues around race, I agree with you. I think most white people simply do not understand the concept of structural racial discrimination as they have no experience with being on the side that gets discriminated against because of their skin colour and/or ethnic group. Obviously there are exceptions, but as a whole Eurocentric thought, which includes white supremacy, has been dominant throughout the past couple of centuries.

With regards to socialism, I find that in South Africa black people in general tend to have a much better understanding of what socialism is. I would say that is because part of the struggle against apartheid was based on socialism, and people from other racial groups, in general, have been influenced heavily by red scare propaganda or a comparador mindset.

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When you grow up white in America, there’s so much that you have to deprogram from your brain before you can even move left. I had some really shitty views as a kid and I know I held to those just because it was coconut tree in which I fell out of. And beyond that, so much of society is geared towards privileging whiteness, you have to actively work to break out of it.

That said, I am grateful for people in my life who have called me out of stuff and have helped me be better. This is a reminder to all the white folks, if you get called out on something… apologize, understand - actually understand - where you went wrong, and be better.

You pay attention.

Don’t trust our Yakubian tricknology

Your experiences and opinions are completely justified. I’m white, and white people have a shit ton of unlearning to do by default, as others have mentioned. I’d like to believe that a lot of white leftists genuinely support and believe in progressive, socialist, or communist beliefs/movements, but it takes a lot of work to shift from always viewing everything from a white lens.

I’ll admit that I was a bit of a shithead until about 7 years ago when I got introduced to new ideas and began to truly listen to other people’s experiences. When you’re growing up in a primarily white suburban bubble, that kind of curbs social development if there isn’t a lot of exposure to other peoples’ and cultures experiences.

Granted, it is a very common phenomenon that white leftists put on the air of revolutionary thought & rhetoric, but they’re still more white than leftist. A lot of these folks never grow beyond just saying the right things, and the mask can slip off and they’ll show their ass. That does make it difficult to sus out whether a white person is genuine or not, and I’ve run into it plenty of times myself.

Easy, don’t trust anyone unless they call themselves a communist explicitly. “Progressive” and “leftist” are perverted terms in (assuming your location) Amerika. Oh also if they use MSE u might be able to let your guard down too. Fact of the matter is that most ppl don’t really have a coherent ideology cuz why would they?

I dead ass peace’d out from activism because of this shit.

For some reason, a lot of people in the “activist community” are incredibly snotty and mean, too.

Nah, that’s pretty normal.

Prescient

It is reasonable to have these suspicions. In my everyday life I feel infuriated hearing the racist shit the white people I work with may bring up around me, since they assume that I’ll agree with them since I’m white too. Most of the shit they talk about is their callous obsession with the oppressed migrants at the southern border. If that’s what those people do openly and outwardly express, I can imagine just as well that there are white leftists who have not examined and gotten rid of all their prejudices. It’s reasonable to think they have just used their knowledge of left norms and attitudes to hide it way better than the chuds I see irl. I’d say your vigilance is warranted.

I hate how the continued existence of these racial hierarchies poison the minds of so many white people, teaching them a multitude of ways to be alienated from their fellow human beings. The task of the left in dismantling these oppressive hierarchies is a Herculean one, requiring massive socioeconomic changes and I at times despair when thinking of its chances of success in the heart of empire during such a turbulent time in human history.

ngl i feel very similar about cis men. is this intersectionality?