2014 is the year that I probably need 99.5% of White “allies” to stay the fuck away from me in social media spaces. Honestly, I am tired of “educating” them. And I don’t even mean on anti-racism or feminist content. While I am not required to do that either, I understand that some of them learn from my blog/tweets and still view me as a person, while others view me as an emotionless fact portal for consumption and a method to assuage their White guilt. There’s another category, of course. The ones who clearly do not like me and are on my Twitter and blog solely to content troll and plagiarize. The ones who cape for mainstream feminism and keep mixing up the word “unity” with The Help. I am not even speaking of these latter White people in this essay. I have plenty of writing that speaks of their putrid abuse. Obviously, I want nothing to do with them. I am speaking of people who seem to really think that we are friends and that they are great “allies” but are passive aggressively abusive towards me on almost a daily basis.

As I mentioned above, in terms of being tired of “educating” them, I am not even talking about anti-racism or feminist content in the traditional sense. I mean that I am tired of trying to train them on how to treat Black women using social media as human beings. I am tired of “correcting” their behavior as they pat themselves on the back for being liberals, progressives or feminists and not conservatives. As if that alters White supremacy. As if White supremacy does not completely eclipse the binary partisan view that they approach things with. I am tired of trying to teach White people how to be human as they dehumanize me yet have their own humanity conferred as their birthright because of White privilege. 95% of the hundreds of microaggressions that I deal with per month are from White people who would probably tattoo the word “ally” to their left ass cheek. This doesn’t mean that conservatives don’t troll and abuse. They do. Terribly. It’s simply less frequently as they usually wait for a national racial incident to occur to terrorize me; i.e. GZ verdict. I don’t always encounter them daily or hourly.

The idea that I should simply overlook these irritating and manipulative passive aggressive behaviors, ones that occur hundreds of times a month (not hyperbole) simply because these Whites on the Left don’t tweet me direct slurs (some do use coded racist language though) is something that doesn’t sit well with me. Microaggressions harm. Occurring regularly over time has just as much impact as dealing with less frequent incidents of overt racism and the day to day of dealings with institutional racism.

Below are some of the passive aggressive behaviors from White liberals, progressives, feminists…“allies” that I am supposed to overlook because at least they aren’t saying “nigger!”

1) Engage in a behavior that I stated upsets me, that I didn’t consent to, and claim that it is “funny.” I wrote about this before (On People Who Respond To My Stress With Unfunny, Never Clever “Jokes”), how many Whites will IMMEDIATELY tweet anything I stated that I don’t like or causes me trauma because they think abusing me is “ironic” and “satire.” So if I tweet that people responding to old, painful tweets re-triggers me, the White “ally” will then find an old painful tweet and reply to it. The same Whites who will retweet essays about triggers and consent regularly do this to me in practice.

2) Use my essays as “well Gradient Lair proves you wrong!” bricks upside the head of extreme bigots and open the door to more trolling for me. Sometimes these White “allies” will be in an argument with a racist White person and will include my links (or even worse, my Twitter handle) in the conversation. It does not matter to them that perhaps what the racist is saying will harm me. They simply want to prove that they know a Black woman writer whose work and existence proves the racist wrong. Being right matters more to them than my well-being. I have to block, ignore, blacklist on Twitter, Tumblr and Disqus–literally hundreds of people a month. Meanwhile this White “ally” finishes their argument and goes on about their life while I have to take the attacks and clean up their mess. (True, men do this with other sexists and even Black women do this with abusive Black men, which also opens the door to trolls. But it in no way compares to how often Whites do this.)

3) Send unsolicited, triggering articles and demand opinions. This is probably the most common thing that occurs and I discussed this before: I Am Not A 24-Hour On Demand Opinion Generation Machine…, 11 Things People Need To Stop Emailing Me and How To Appropriately Engage With Blogs That Have Anti-Oppression Related Content. They tend to do this for two reasons. Some get off on what they think will be an Angry Black Woman™ performance (which I mentioned when I wrote about Ani DiFranco) and some want to “show” me that they are reading up on sociopolitical issues in a way that resembles when a cat brings a dead mouse to her owner as a gift for approval. I…don’t need any gifts. I already live the things that they are “finding out” about. And unless I ask for a link or it’s relative to an existing conversation, I don’t need it. (I previously wrote about men doing the same thing on gender issues.)

4) Try to create conflict/seek attention by adding Twitter users and tags to my tweets that I did not add. I know how to use Twitter. I have used Twitter for almost 5 years. Thus, if I want a user name and a hashtag added to my tweet, I will add them. When I tweet out my essays from Gradient Lair, I rarely include user name of any person I speak of, especially if a critical womanist post. So no, I don’t need to include Tim Wise, Lena Dunham, Lily Allen, Miley Cyrus, Ani DiFranco, any mainstream feminists’ Twitter user name etc. If I wanted to speak to those people, I would. I don’t need to include any “progressive” hashtags to my tweets of my essays so that #tcot can then come and call me racist names for days as the White “allies” who added all of this mess to their retweets of my tweets go on about their lives clueless. White people who do this are definitely trying to be seen performing allyship versus being an ally. I write to share my perspectives on White supremacy, racism, sexism, misogynoir, intersectionality…whatever the post is about with fellow Black women. They are my primary audience.

5) Whitesplain/classplain plagiarism. I deal with plagiarism a lot. Several times a week in most weeks, actually. Anyway, no, I do not call up my “lawyer” that I have on “retainer” or publicly “shame” each plagiarist as they have their mainstream connections defend their every move. No I am not “allowing” myself to be plagiarized or any other victim blaming nonsense. The fact that some of the same “allies” have given me the same White privileged, class privileged excuses every time I mention plagiarism reveals that they do not listen to what I actually say nor consider how Black women are regularly plagiarized when we are in the margins nor consider how Black women–Black people in general have our ideas, creativity, work and knowledge regularly spliced away from our culture and identities as a key tool of White supremacy: cultural appropriation.

6) Instead of retweeting my posts and essays, they create new tweets where they Whitesplain what I meant in my essay, add their own meaning that does not apply or do absolutely anything possible to not use my essay’s title. To be clear, of course anyone can tweet my links anytime they want (I have a Content Use Policy that says it’s cool). But there is something specific occurring with White “allies,” and the same ones in fact, where they refuse to retweet my tweets as is. Refuse. If I use AAVE, they post the link and Whitesplain my meaning. There are some who can only engage with my tweets and essays if they can dominate how my message is conveyed. And they do it every single day. Some will add gargantuan over-inflated compliments as they erase and modify my message. Passive aggressive.

7) Restructure first and then reblog my essays. White women, specifically, are guilty of this one. If I write an essay about gender, it will be intersectional. Being female and a woman is not the only aspect of my identity as a Black woman. I have had White women reblog my essays now, but they will remove large paragraphs that mention race and intersectional issues and keep the most generic ones on gender so that they as White women can be “included” in what I wrote. Worse, they know that most people on Tumblr DO NOT read the original poster’s (OP) link. Thus, they have basically mass shared something altered from my words. Now, if they are only interested in a paragraph, they could easily copy that part, create a Quote post on Tumblr and quote it. It could still be out of context especially if they don’t add a source link. But to physically manipulate my essays to alter the meaning to center Whiteness is definitely White supremacy and abuse. Patricia Hill Collins wrote it best:

Traditionally, many U.S. White feminist scholars have resisted having Black women as full colleagues. Moreover, this historical suppression of Black womenʼs ideas has had a pronounced influence on feminist theory. One pattern of suppression is that of omission.Theories advanced as being universally applicable to women as a group upon closer examination appear greatly limited by the White, middle-class, and Western origins of their proponents.

8) Plagiarize my essays upon reblog. Many Whites, usually women, will reblog my post where only the first 3-4 sentences show, take content from my essay, reword it and then add a note upon reblog as if my words are “their opinion” on my essay when it is my essay. Then their (usually) all White readers can think that they are responding to my post with some sort of intersectional insight that they never had in the first place. And again, on Tumblr, once someone adds a very long comment to a post upon reblog, very few people read the OP’s work. (There’s also people who add long comments solely to get exposure through my blog; their comments are actually brand new essays.)

9) Try to play “hero” by forcing me to remain in conversations with abusive and racist Whites so that they can perform their allyship by “taking down” the racist. Look, I think it is great that some White people want to challenge other Whites’ racism and White privilege while challenging the White supremacist society that benefits both of them. However, this does not have to occur in my Twitter mentions. Once I say “I do not want to have this conversation” and the “ally” continues to copy me on the tweets where they are taking down the racist, then I know an audience matters to them more than my safety and well-being. Once they get bored with that racist White person, the “ally” goes back to their life. Meanwhile I still was exposed to racist abuse that harms me and am probably fighting off a new troll. They ignore me denying consent to participate in that conversation. In many of these instances, I end up blocking both the “ally” and the racist White person.

10) Use “self care” demands as a way to silence and victim blame and always at the wrong time. I wrote about this before: Mentioning “Self-Care” In Certain Ways Can Inadvertently Silence People. White women who claim “allyship” do this a lot. If I am in the middle of dealing with racist/sexist/misogynoiristic abuse and voicing anger, hurt, stress or any negative emotion, that is not the time to talk about how if I engaged in self care the bigots would magically evaporate. And it is accusatory. Simply because I do not voice my self-care regimens, what I do to relax, what I do to de-stress etc. does not mean that I am abusing myself offline (I am not but even if I were, then I would need support, not accusations) nor does it mean that the bigotry that I face on the hour online would decrease its intensity or necessarily alter my responses. Instead of them perhaps tweeting (without clogging my mentions though) about why the White person attacking me is wrong, and thereby educate their own White followers, they instead want to know if I go to the spa every time I am called slurs and trolled.

Obviously the usual abuse applies; centering Whiteness. Not checking their privilege. Claiming that me or other Black women rejecting their abuse is the “real” abuse. Regularly interrupting conversations that I have with other Black women to play either tyrant (“my view matters more than yours!”) or toddler (“please spoon feed me some critical race theory, it’s your duty!”). But again, the White people that I am speaking of in this essay are ones who truly think that they are friendly and kind people who are not racist. Many of them reject the mainstream feminists that cause all types of hell on a massive platform yet they themselves still regularly abuse daily and cannot see it.

Now sure, White privilege, White guilt and defense mechanisms galore are kicking in for some White liberals, progressives, feminists, “allies,” who might read this. “Not all Whites!” “Not all allies!” “But we are nicer than conservatives so that counts!” “My intentions were good!” “Well you have to accept this abuse unless you don’t want help with ‘your’ cause!.” “Critiquing our abuse of you is the real racism!” “You obviously do not want 'unity’ as feminists with us if you won’t be silent!” “Anyone can do these things, it doesn’t make them White; so it’s irrelevant that 99% of the people who do them to you are White and flex White privilege and serve Whiteness when they do them! It’s coincidence!”

Look, I don’t want an elaborate defense of these things that I mentioned above. I don’t want any excuses. Whites need to regularly confront the failures in their allyship. While they still have White privilege, of course some Whites this listing of passive aggressive abuse and unawareness may not apply to (i.e. I recognized two of them in my Top 20 on Twitter). This is still a massive problem for me and many other Black women in social media, on the hour, especially once we’re somewhat noticed in the mainstream. This is not make-believe.

There are only two options available for White “allies” who do this and think that they are going to continue to communicate with me in 2014. One is to stop and change. The other is to leave me the fuck alone. People have showed me who they are. And like Maya Angelou said, I believe them. Oh and for any fellow people of colour who choose to read this essay as “I want White approval!” actually no, no the fuck I don’t. I simply reject abuse that reinforces White supremacy. I cannot quietly be harmed. Like Audre Lorde let me know, silence is not going to protect me.

Related Posts: Allies Are Still Privileged; Don’t Forget It, I Don’t Want Tim Wise As An Ally. No Thanks., Black Women Are Not Just White Women’s “Allies” In Feminism