The Rebel Prof is honored to present a guest post written by an anonymous academic of color.

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Your silence will not protect you.” –Audre Lorde

Image by Roger Peet

The host of this blog, who kindly invited me to write a guest post and helped me edit the post, suggested a picture like the one on the left.  While the image definitely screams my deepest desire, it is not quite what I had in mind while writing this piece. Thus in an attempt to better articulate what I wanted to capture, I went on Google image search and typed in “happy holidays family” (not “white family” or “Merry Christmas,” just to be clear).  Tada~

I have noticed that the images we constantly get from Google (or anywhere) often invoke a mix of feelings in me—anger, pain, sense of absurdity, shame, to name a few. What these images share is their relentless salespersonship of white comfort.

I have been thinking about white people’s comfort for a while. You see, growing up, I didn’t get to read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” or “The Uses of Anger” so I wasn’t taught about the danger of white comfort beyond white hatred. For so long, the nice white people around me have been pointing at the angry white dudes with torches marching down the streets of Charlottesville as the true enemy, the only enemy, as if their comfortable place in this oppressive reality were just an unfortunate coincidence , as if they had no control. I have seen nice white people giving up fights with the system because the system was “nice” to THEM. Then, I hear them requesting appreciation for THEIR suffering and silence, because their mere lack of enthusiastic participation in white supremacy makes them heroic and yet vulnerable, as if the torches in Charlottesville are burning down THEIR lives and those of THEIR children. I have felt the guilt planted in my heart for wanting to fight, for wanting them to fight with me, as if I were rude for having dared to disrupt THEIR comfort.

Then I think of those who are uncomfortably white but also do not want to make other whites uncomfortable. I think of how they would rather spend time apologizing for white silence than break it. I remember being told not to judge a person by their occasional participation in oppression and to embrace forgiveness, as if I were vicious for failing to heal wounds that are only “occasionally” cut open. I think of being constantly reminded of the perfect survivor, resilient, quiet, forbearing and extraordinarily successful against all odds, as if suffering is not worthy should the sufferer fall short of perfection, as if there were such a thing as perfection outside of what whiteness desires.

I write this piece, 55 years after MLK pled with the “white moderates” to acknowledge the urgency of Black suffering and 37 years after Audre Lorde invited white women to get over their fragility and guilt and embrace the anger of women of color. Yet here I find myself, struggling to prove my worth to white people by white standards and being told my frustration is due to my personal lacking. Unlike Lorde, my anger is not sharp and focused, it is confused and disorienting. So I write. This writing did not start with the intention to inspire but to clarify so I save the last part for myself.

Why can’t I tell the nice white people in their face that their silence is toxic and their excuses are utter bullshit? Is it my job to tell them so?  Should I like or even love those who have treated me with respect and love as an individual but remained unmoved by my shared destiny with other dispossessed and intimidated by our rage? Is it my survival instinct or cowardice that made me decide to publish these words anonymously? Have I made myself too comfortable?