An essay called Dear White Feminists: Your Good Intentions Are Not Enough, originally published by Huffington Post, has been circulating on Twitter recently. It's an uncomfortable read, challenging the 'it's the thought that counts' attitude that many allies have, without pandering to white fragility.
The article is brimming with anger, as it should be. If the political trash-fire that is 2016 has taught us anything, it's that (mostly) white moderates are more than willing to throw minorities under the bus in order to preserve the status quo.
It comes out in their tone policing. It comes out in taking condescending stands that ignore the concerns of the community. It comes out in calls for respectability politics, wherein everyone has a nice 'respectful' dialogue without considering how the socio-political power structures of oppression means minorities are always at a disadvantage in those kinds of conversations.
Again and again, the answer from centrist progressive thinkers seems to be, Why can't everyone just get along?
In a media sphere obsessed with whiteness, it's worth considering what whiteness is. Does whiteness include my brother's second generation Greek-Australian girlfriend? Does it include my classmate with a Maltese background who was teased in school for being 'ethnic'? Does it extend only to those with Judeo-Christian values?
If you care to google the terms, the definitions of whiteness and white are different. Whiteness has always been a moving target that has more to do with power and privilege than race or skin colour. Author and activist Paul Kivel writes that whiteness is 'a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white'.
As a construct, whiteness didn't exist until about the 17th century as a way to create a status quo among poor white people and black people. Since the elite white Europeans feared an uprising, they created the idea of a Euro-centric 'whiteness'. Poor white folk were given certain privileges like 'white-only' events and the abolishment of indentured servitude for whites, while black slaves had rights taken away.
From the beginning, creating race tensions was a way of easing class tensions, so that poor white people would identify with rich white people, rather than joining with people of colour. At its roots, whiteness was created as a tool of oppression.
"Paradoxically, the construct of whiteness today is both fragile and prevalent. As more people of colour assert