Discouraged But Determined

An email from yet another deluded racist

Hello friends,

Discouraged but determined. These were the words that came to me after yet another racist diatribe in my inbox.

Sadly, people of the Global Majority face racism every day in global minority controlled spaces and countries. And many of us face it in online spaces, which some global minority folx seem the think are their sole preserve.

I wrote this the day after I’d published an update on the Substack Notes experience, and renewed my commitment to undermine racism at all costs, and to weaken its foundations by giving people different viewpoints and stories to consider, and by highlighting new paths to a more equal world.

It was the day after I’d noticed a decline in paid subscriptions, while seeing those who post on less “controversial” topics easily reach a goal I should have reached a year ago.

It was the same day as a Global Majority friend told me about some aggression she’d experienced from a group of young white guys (and when I wondered what role racism played in it and concluded that it had to be a factor).

It was the day on which someone tried to scam me with an ostensibly supportive comment, but when I checked his profile - as I always do - I saw that what he supported was the opposite of what I stand for. It was clearly an attempt to get round the commenter approval feature I have turned on.

And so to the email….some time back I posted a response to a Medium article, supporting the idea that without systemic power, Black people can’t be systemically racist (yes, we can uphold racist and white supremacist systems, but that’s not what the article was about). For that, I got accused of bigotry and “anti-white racism”.

Ridiculous, right? There’s no such thing. (If you disagree, then do some reading - start with this).

But as I sighed to myself, I thought about how often people who look like me have to put up with this nonsense. I know I don’t get the worst of it - not at all - but it’s wearing all the same.

What I can say, though, is that if those folx think I’m going to be distracted, they are wrong. At least not permanently.

I may occasionally be a bit derailed but I’ll always get back on track. I use those comments as teaching tools and I know that they are fighting a losing battle.

We are the Global Majority and time is on our side (kinda). As I said to my colleague AJ “what they stand for is also what will bring them down”. Because this inhumanity isn’t sustainable.

Do you agree? And if you do, what are you personally doing about it?

Thanks for reading,

Sharon

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© Sharon Hurley Hall, 2023. All Rights Reserved.

I am an anti-racism educator and activist, Co-Founder of Mission Equality, the author of “I’m Tired of Racism”, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast.