Flagpole pays me to give sex and relationship advice, but today something else is taking up all of the space in my mind. I know the general idea is to never treat anything too seriously in a social media space, but don’t forget that there are actual people writing almost every fascist, racist or hateful comment you see.
I’m still reeling from an actual person telling me that National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) and Nazi punks are tolerated in punk and metal scenes. What city does this idiot live in? Because I came up going to punk shows in the Deep South and on the East Coast, and we have one rule when it comes to dealing with Nazis at the show: Drag them outside, and beat the brakes off of their boneheaded asses. Just like I know that black tapered jeans will always be a foundational part of the punk aesthetic, I also know that you never ever let a Nazi believe that they are safe in your presence.
You know, maybe this is actual relationship advice, because I am not trying to be friends or lovers with someone who will not protect me and keep me safe. I do not value ease or comfort more than I value the love and struggle of my ancestors, or as much as I want to do everything I can to impede the spread of hate and fascism in America. Centrists and fascists both love to talk about how they don’t judge people for their politics, but a person has to have had a seriously privileged life to not see how politics are an expression of a person’s relationship with the world. To vote for a person with fascist policies is to support fascism, full stop. I don’t want to hear shit about how you voted for someone because they claim your religion—just say you don’t really care about politics and leave. I’m not coming to your house if your roommate has a Skrewdriver poster, and if you’re my roommate, then I’m telling you to take it down before I destroy it (true story).
If you are not a person of color, you cannot reasonably expect your friends of color to be a safe quarter for fascist or racist attitudes. I gag when I think of the amount of people who have attempted to shame me for loving myself—I’m talking about people expecting me, a woman of color raised in the Jim Crow South, to be OK with them talking about how scary they find Black men. They see me in the pit or I move into their group home, and then somehow decide that I’m the one who is going to absolve either their casual or overt racism. Have I ever mentioned the childhood friend that I stopped talking to in adulthood because they were calling Black people the N-word in conversation with me? They’d done this the entire time I knew them, but I wasn’t able to confront them and kick them out of my life until my mid-twenties. That’s how subservient I was to white supremacy, to the point that I was essentially telling a racist that it was OK to be a racist.
You would think it would be easy to have an antiracist proclivity just by virtue of my face and my skin, but it’s shocking to me how often folks who aren’t people of color expect me to let those things slide. The above incident is a perfect example—my childhood friend was genuinely shocked, speechlessly stuttering out wordless syllables as if it had never occurred to her to not call people of color slurs in front of other people of color. I can’t even waste time on an app without this kind of stuff being thrown in my face, so here’s my advice today: have a little shame. People of color are threatened and scared enough in today’s world, so don’t burden a friend with the responsibility of making you feel better about having racist beliefs. Here’s how you feel better about believing something that’s racist: unlearn it. And that’s your job, not mine.
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