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“Many people of color on the front lines of whiteness — and women of color in particular — are tired. We have been tired. We’ve been depleted and have nothing left. The 2016 election sent out a burst of urgency and started activating some people that have never been activated before. Many of us believed that if we worked hard enough, pushed hard enough, gave hard enough, taught hard enough, we could get white people — the ones endangering us — to help make the world safer for our loved ones and ourselves. Naively, some of us hoped that these issues were not as deeply entrenched as they actually are. Even more likely we felt we had no other option.

And we went hard and sometimes it worked. Sometimes there was progress. A few people would get a new insight, several people would start to take some new steps, but then there would be powerful snapbacks into whiteness. The “progressive” white person learns some new thing about race and then wants to come to you and try to tell you about yourself or your racial experience. The “progressive” white person learns some new things but then feels entitled to all of you and resents when they don’t get what they want. “Progressive” white person then does all they can to punish you for not being what they want you to be. The betrayals start coming from closer up and in new ways. They pull you into nonsense battles, make shit about themselves, and then MAYBE decide to loosen up on their white ignorance.

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At first I thought my tiredness was just me being depressed and despondent — my own inability to keep carrying this overwhelming load — my own weakness. But then I started to pick up on the palpable exhaustion from many people of color around me. That’s when I realized how tapped out many of us were. We had given everything we had to give and taken in or taken on all of the racial violence that we had the capacity to absorb.

At this point, any white person set on rationalizing explicit Nazis is far beyond my reach of influence. There may be some people of color still up for doing that particular white people work, they may not be exhausted yet, still have reason to hope, or have their own needs to work out — and more power to you if that’s where you are. But honestly, it is past time for white folks to be doing this work among themselves anyway, and there are more than enough tools and resources they can use should they choose to do so. But for many of us we have hit a tipping point — a new frontier where something different has to occur.

We (Threads of Solidarity) have argued for the necessity of people of color solidarity, and this tipping point pushes us even more strongly in this direction. We — people of color — need to prioritize our well-being, root out the white supremacy among ourselves, and start building something different — something beautiful — something human — something healing. A new reality based on humanization and construction rather than objectification and destruction. In this spirit, we have decided to work on a series specifically focusing on healing and solidarity across and within our people of color communities. We look forward to strengthening our communities as we seek to build a stronger world.

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