Discussion
Your insistence on respectability in the face of oppression only demonstrates your willingness to abandon your promises when they become inconvenient. It shows how deeply you still believe that whiteness insulates you from consequences. And it exposes that you cannot be trusted.
Mourning does not erase history. Grief does not change harm. Relief is not cruelty. It is the body recognizing that maybe, just maybe, one less agent of violence is no longer in power.
True solidarity requires you to resist the urge to police Black grief, Black rage, and Black relief. If you find yourself more disturbed by someone’s refusal to mourn than by the harm that necessitated that refusal, it is past time to interrogate where your loyalties actually lie.
Because here’s the reality, if your “allyship” only extends to the moments that keep you comfortable, it is not “allyship” at all. It’s performance. And performance will never dismantle the myth of white supremacy.
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