I am super white.
Like, extremely so. With the exception of one long ago grandparent from Panama, my entire family immigrated from a cluster of towns in Ireland and Portugal that leave your children with little-to-no melanin. I even love yoga pants and Starbucks and I can’t handle cayenne pepper on my food.
Kidding aside, in the hellish past few weeks, I’ve decided something based on this fact. I have blue eyes and freckles and I plan to use them. Because I have the privilege to “go low” in a way my Muslim and POC friends and fellow citizens cannot.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Michelle Obama’s famous speech at the DNC this year. It made all us liberals feel morally superior and proud and smug. We thought having the high ground meant we would win the day. We forgot we aren’t Obi Wan Kenobi.
Michelle Obama had to “go high” because she’s black. That’s all there is to it. If you are black, or a woman, or LGBT, or an immigrant, you have to work twice as hard, be more classy, gracious, educated and submissive then a white man to be considered equal. Because white, male supremacists consider themselves to be the “Default” and everyone else is less than, simply striving to measure up to their inherent awesomeness.
Being white, I’m allowed a little more breathing room then that. All us easy sun burners are.
There is a quote from the television show The West Wing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
“Somebody came along and said, 'Liberal' means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense...and instead of saying, 'Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trip back to the Fifties!', we cowered in the corner, and said, 'Please, don't hurt me.' 'No more.”
No more can white liberals like myself say "maybe it won't be so bad" or preach “loving the enemy” as a cover for apathy. Because we tried that. Since I was twelve years old, we have tried that. And all that we got was bill after bill shot down, Supreme Court nominees blocked, and over a dozen mass shootings unprevented because we were being nice while the Republicans were being children. It did not work. As the only color the GOP considers valid, considers human, we’re also the only ones we can make them listen too.
If you are white, and 5’4’’ and 130 pounds soaking wet - in short, if you look like me - the police are not going to target you. The alt-right will not shoot or lynch you. So scream as loud as you can, punch a fucking Nazi, be as nasty and lowball as every spineless, heartless member of Cheeto McFuckface’s cabal are to our black and Muslim and Latinx brothers and sisters. Because we can. Because racists do not kick the shit out of a girl dressed like Jessica Day.
If you are a man, if you are straight and cisgendered, if you are Christan, know you can push farther than anyone else because you are safer under the new regime than anyone else. It is our duty to go low because we’re the only ones that going low won’t kill.
Resist loudly and frequently and give as much money as you can afford to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Call your representatives and complain about the Dakota Pipeline and the travel ban targeting Muslims and every other inane, hateful EO getting signed, even if it has nothing to do with your day-to-day life.
Because the people these things are effecting the most are not as privileged as us. They don't get heard or respected as much. So, for them, we’re not going to be our normal, polite, ‘let’s have a spirited debate where all ideas are valid’ selves anymore. No more. No more are we going to be the grownups. No more going high if the other side won’t extend us the same courtesy.
