Ted Russell

20/ James Baldwin explained it this way: “If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it bring must be borne…” Black people know this. White progressives must learn it.

19/…but if you start with a grounding in the Black freedom struggle, or develop that grounding, you will develop the kind of resolve and long-view that keeps you in the fight and wards off the kind of despondency that leads many to pack it in…

18/ I would say that if you come to your anti racism just as one more thing in your liberal/left bag of issues, you won’t be ready for the difficulty you’ll face no matter which issues you focus on in your work/life…

17/ Some of us came to anti racism first, and THEN our progressive politics because of how we were raised and around whom (this is often the Southern white progressive story). Others came to progressive politics and then that included anti-racism but just as one of many issues…

16/ White folks who, on the other hand, were not principally informed by that struggle get dispirited easily because they haven’t learned from that inter generational resilience…

15/ because when THAT was your entry point for social awareness you learn that justice is a long game, and you might well never see it. Better than you have come and gone without seeing it. But you have to take your place in the long line of those willing to die for it…

14/ But when you haven’t had to (a privilege) it’s easy to take your toys and go home, so to speak. I think the white folks who DON’T do this tend to be those of us whose consciousness was formed by the Black freedom struggle…

13/ And please know none of this is meant to romanticize suffering or the strength often born of it. It is simply to say that when you’ve been wading thru the shit for hundreds of years, you learn how to wade through it. It’s the only choice you have…

12/ To those white folks worried about Twitter toxicity. Please, AMERICA has been toxic for Black people for hundreds of years. If they can manage to fight on, survive and thrive despite it, you can deal with ugliness in your timeline.

11/ And yes, I know that women face more than I do as a man. Rape threats are an entirely different thing. I get it. But, um, yeah, so Black women face that every day. They aren’t bailing the same way…