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Non-Black POC Racism, Making Mistakes, and Being A Better Ally
Everyone needs to step up against racism, not just white people.
A moment of learning
The other day, I had the hopefully un-unique experience of realizing that I might be inadvertently supporting white supremacy.
To be clear, I hope it’s a common thing to realize that you might be supporting things that you don’t want to intentionally support so that you can stop doing it. To be super clear, white supremacy needs to be dismantled, and if you’re accidentally supporting it like I was, you gotta stop.
If you can’t tell from my profile photo, or didn’t happen to look, I’m a non-Black POC. I’m ethnically Japanese (and a tad bit Korean, if you believe 23andMe), although I distinctly identify as American, being that my family has been in the country since around 1890. I went to undergrad at Berkeley and got my protesting chops in, and consider myself to be pretty anti-racist, so imagine my surprise and discomfort at feeling like perhaps I was accidentally supporting institutional white supremacy in a Slack community I’m part of.
I hadn’t really been vocal about my stances against racism in this Slack workspace, as I’d say I’ve been plenty vocal on my public Facebook wall, and generally…