Since the murder of a certain Christian Nationalist White Supremacist public figure, people across the political and social ideological spectrum have been screaming at those of us who don’t care, aren’t showing enough empathy (although that certain someone didn’t believe empathy was a real thing), and are reminding folx of the hateful bigoted vitriol he spoke. They don’t like being inconveniently reminded about his awfulness as a human. They don’t appreciate the truthful ways in which some, many, perhaps most will remember him by; instead they demand fealty and that we honor him. So much so that some of these folx were trying to get him to lay in state in our hallowed halls of political power, are trying to get statues of him erected on all university campuses in Oklahoma (Daughters of the Confederacy anyone?), and are producing a gazillion think pieces of what a great guy he was. He is the right’s (the white’s?) symbol of some important figure they are trying to equate to the great Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. I really wish we could introduce an amendment that these people keep MLK out their racist, lying, hateful mouths. But we can’t, so here we are.

This piece is not about that guy. I couldn’t care less about him, his family, his community, or his followers. If that seems hateful to you, that’s a you problem. I have zero empathy, zero compassion, and zero fucks for any of those people. And before you or anyone else chimes in with “but his wife” – NO! STOP! She is just as vile a human as he was, and perhaps more so because not only do white women carry and enforce white supremacy for their men folk, they do so like any other marginalized group – more brutally, more violently, more evilly than the systemically dominant. It’s why James Baldwin wrote in his Journey to Atlanta essay in Notes of a Native Son about Black cops being more brutal and violent to Black people than the white cops. It’s why we see Latiné people who patrol the Southern border are more violent and brutal with the people crossing the border illegally. She will be just fine. She’s already capitalizing on her husband’s death and has sworn to not only continue his work. She said “the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry…the movement my husband built will not die…I refuse to let that happen…it will be stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever…my husband’s mission will not end, I won’t allow it.” Anyways, I digress. And for the “what about the poor kids” group – rest assured, they will be raised to be more violently racist than their father. If any of them come out of that family not being a complete bigot, it will be because they did a lot of work to unfuck their minds from decades of racist grooming. It should be considered child abuse, but it isn’t. So, good little Erika will get a pass on that. So, no. I have no empathy or compassion to spare for folx who wish me and members of my community or any other community death. And to ask me to care is a kind of racist gaslighting that is so very common to this country and probably the entire white world – particularly the Euro-descended white world. Actually, it’s racist enabling.

For some reason racism is not a deal breaker for white people. We saw that with the 2016 election of the rotting pile of human excrement (RPHE) and again in 2023 when he was elected again AFTER being convicted of 34 felony counts and an endless list of well documented gross behaviors and crimes. This alone should give “well meaning” white people pause. And I’m being very generous with “well meaning” because I’m not sure anyone can actually mean well when they are demanding empathy for a person or people who wish death upon entire groups of people. Which by the way, is genocidal fantasy. Just saying. But apparently, people are also quick to rebrand genocide too as long as it is against a Black or Brown population.

This piece is not about him, his family, or his ideologies. It is more about what I’ve noticed and how I notice it showing up in my own life and the lives of others. This is for non-Black folx of all racial persuasions, but mostly white folx. Let’s talk about racist enabling and their enablers.

I’ve been saying for years (at least since the first election of the RPHE), I’ve been cutting friends and family out of my life who enable racists, racism, and anti-Blackness specifically and other forms of bigotry generally. Some folx went screaming and kicking, some went silently, many have criticized me for ending relationships over politics. It’s never been about politics, unless those politics are about how best to exterminate me and my people – choking us out through poverty policies, murdering my people by funding the police like fascist military arms of the state, starving my people through educational “reform”, or economic policy stripping us of our generational wealth. What I have always responded with is, “why would I want to share physical space with anyone who’s willing to share physical space with racist people? Why would I keep someone in my life who is cool with people like David Duke or whatever iteration of hate?” And trust, I get it from white folx and Black folx, from one of my parents, cousins/aunts/uncles, and life long friends. For too many of these people, racism isn’t real in the sense that you can touch it, taste it, see it clearly. That is the very nature of racism, to confound and confuse, to morph into air that makes it difficult for otherwise reasonable people to be able to see. As Ancestor Toni Morrison said, “The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

Racism is easily explained away by “they didn’t mean it that way”, “you’re being too sensitive”, “sticks and stones…”, “it was a joke”, “they aren’t racist, I’ve known them…”, “you don’t know their heart”, and my personal favorite “they don’t have a racist bone in their body.” And in the past, I’ve too often pushed past these quips and stayed put, allowed myself to be in spaces where my psychic, psychological, emotional, and spiritual safety were not valued or protected. In hindsight, I wonder if my physical safety were threatened by the racist in the group if my non-Black friends or family would protect my body from physical harm. Fortunately for me, I have rarely, if ever been in the position to find out.

Most often, racism works this way. It isn’t the physical threats, the assaults, the murders. Although those happen. It is no longer crosses burning on front lawns, firebombings, and bricks through windows with hateful notes attached; although these still happen too. I think my “well meaning” non-Black people would notice these and likely not enable those kinds of assaults. But, would they put their bodies on the line to protect me or others like me? That, I can’t say. Perhaps my white relative might. Perhaps, but I don’t know because he, too, hangs with racist folx and is all kumbaya (how we were raised – that and, colorblindness). I’m also certain many of them understand things like domestic violence – the physical wounds heal, the psychological ones take much longer and are always there, scabbed over but always present. That they can’t wrap their minds around the psychic, psychological, emotional, and spiritual safety of people when it comes to racism is kind of gobsmacking. Honestly.

People I love with my full being have put me in some really painful situations more than once. I didn’t have words to explain then what I understand now, I could’t explain why this was wrong and not okay.

I often talk about the first Skinhead I met. It was somewhat memorable for me. I’d grown up with bikers (Hell’s Angels, Banditos, and some other gangs), so I’ve long been desensitized to those particular gangs. I know how to be around them, how to move, etc. And rest assured, I understand their racism now better than I did when I was running with bikers. I understood then as I do now, that one-on-one, these guys are manageable, decent even. But in a group, that’s when one move can set off violence quite easily. So, I met my first Skinhead. In Seattle, Washington. The guy was from Lynden, WA. He was a bouncer at the Underground Nightclub in the U District of Seattle. It was an underage nightclub (18+). He was decent, a decent conversationalist (at least in my 19-year old underdeveloped brain), and made no trouble.

It was the second Skinhead I met that really hurt. I was with a lose relative at a bar in Anacortes, WA when his friend came in and sat with us. I immediately had a physical reaction to him. My dear friend would say, “my soul didn’t take him”. My body knew that I was not safe but I couldn’t identify why my body was on high alert; and frankly because of a lifetime of desensitization, I didn’t even fully notice what my body was doing in the moment. I noticed my body tense but couldn’t explain why. At some point in the convo after the guy’s racism became clear through something he said, my relative asked me what I thought of his friend. To which I responded, “He wants me dead, so I have no thoughts about your friend.” Then the friend tried to explain he didn’t want me dead just not there (not necessarily just the bar but the city, state, nation, etc). He basically said he didn’t want me to exist (aka dead). My relative and he carried on their convo and frankly, I don’t remember what happened after that. I left, clearly. But the rest is a blank. Must have blacked out – not from the few beers but the out of body experience of sitting across from a Skinhead who was a friend of my relative’s. I also know, there was nothing malicious about my relative’s intentions. I didn’t assume so then, and I don’t now. It’s a mindset that evolves through fairly specific ingredients any of us are fed by families, communities, educations, etc that go unchallenged and therefore, unseen. Some might call this hegemony, because it just works without anyone specifically working it, therefore it’s inner workings go unnoticed.

Now, why would my relative put me in that situation? Why would he, knowing I’m mixed Black, put me in conversation with a Skinhead whose ideology is violently anti-Black? I can’t answer those questions and I haven’t asked him. But, I do know my relative well enough to know he “doesn’t have a racist bone in his body” (which he’s said multiple times). I know he treats people the way they treat him and he always leads with kindness and respect. I also know that the colorblindness and kumbaya were drilled into him as a kid because they were drilled into me by family, community, and education. And I know that is how he approaches the world today – live and let live kind of stuff. Which, is good in theory and principle if humans were known for doing what’s right absent of law. My relative isn’t a terrible human, he’s not a monster, he’s just a regular working man, father, husband, son, and community member. He does what’s right regardless of laws and being told he has to do something. By all measures, he’s a hardworking, decent, man. And he hangs with some racist folx. I don’t know if this Skinhead friend of his is still around but that moment taught me that I’m not fully safe with my relative. Some part of me always has to stay alert and ready to fight or run when I’m with him, even as one part of my brain tells me he’d protect me physically. But because he is comfortable with racist friends (here, I’m excluding the Skinhead guy, there are others), I am not psychically, psychologically, emotionally, or spiritually safe when I’m with him.

Or there is the time I went to hang with my best friend. We’ve known each other since forever and her older brother and cousin were in my grade in elementary school. I didn’t meet her until we were in our early 20s. Racism and bigotry really piss her off. She isn’t formally educated in the matters of race, racism, oppression, colonization, etc, but she gets it as a lay person, just not at the academic level. She’s a little Tasmanian Devil when it comes to women’s rights, human rights, racism, etc. However, she has put me in situations that are not safe for me psychically, psychologically, emotionally, or spiritually. That night when I went up to visit her in Spokane, WA, we went out to meet up with this guy she was seeing. A nondescript white guy who’s a nature photographer for some big mags – I think he’s done photography for National Geographic and other nature mags. Anyways, I don’t know what it was about him, what he said or what he did that got my Spidey senses tingling. My body did a similar thing as it did when I met my relative’s friend – it was on high alert the entire time we were at the bar. I didn’t have words beyond, “your guy’s a racist”. To which she agreed. We went back to her house at the end of the night and passed out. I woke up to someone coming into the house (I was sacked out on the couch) and it’s him. He came to get laid. Cool. I really don’t care, get it girl. But, let me tell you how I couldn’t sleep or feel safe until he left. My body wouldn’t let me.

Now, for me to be able to feel the racism oozing off of someone, it has to be strong. There are many ways my mind and body have been desensitized to danger that are so profound and vast that, like any good marginalized person, I’ve learned to gaslight my own self. There are not many dangerous situations that make me feel unsafe – half the time, I don’t notice until it is so obvious everyone around me notices. So, when I say someone is racist, it isn’t because I freely label anyone or anything I don’t like or am uncomfortable around racist. It’s because I have a deeply deeply bad and sour feeling in my stomach, my body goes on high alert, every hair on the back of my neck stands to attention. But unlike my bestie, the vast majority of my friends and family will dismiss it using one of the above lines, gaslighting me because they don’t see or feel it themselves and because they’ve been socialized, groomed, and trained to see racism as just another idea in the supermarket of ideas, not the dangerous harbinger of violence it portends.

These two examples are two that illustrate the danger my family and friends have put me in. I’m certain they weren’t thinking they were putting me in danger. I’m almost certain they didn’t see any harm, just discussion with an “opposing” view, just wanting to live life in the moment without a care in the world like anyone. And clearly I survived both encounters. But if these are experiences I’ve had with two of the closest people to me in my life, how can I reconcile that and remain in community with them? There have been other experiences with my relative, his wife, and his friends that will keep me distant from them perhaps the rest of our lives. My bestie tries to “get it”, and she does to a degree. I love hanging out with her but I also know that in certain settings and such, I will always be on guard. I limit my time by gauging my energy for dealing with fuck shit should it arise. However, with her I KNOW she’ll have my back. If I’d been able to articulate the fullness of my fears that night, the night would have gone extremely differently. I know this because now she cuts those people out of her life, family or not. She won’t put up with racism.

I grew up in the land of what I call “polite racism”. Most racist people I’ve dealt with are quite polite about it, explain in terms used by the Southern Strategy folx instead of the loaded clearly racist terms. They’ve Richard Spencered racist lingo and action to sanitize it as polite political discourse when it is actually violence. As a result, people, especially white people don’t view racism as impolite, improper, or negative really. The vast vast majority of white people cannot imagine cutting those folx out of their lives. To them the racism is just a character flaw like arrogance, envy, or greed.

I’d like to think that my family and friends are unaware of the tomes of research around racial battle fatigue, weathering, and racialized abuse. Either they are unaware or simply do not care. The research wasn’t there when I was a young woman, or at least it wasn’t common knowledge and publicly discussed. Can’t say it is widely known now, except a person would have to be in a certain kind of media/blogosphere to be able to ignore the dearth of knowledge surrounding the physical consequences of racialized abuse. I’m talking about non-physical forms because I’d suspect that a lot of the folx I’m talking about here would notice those forms of racism as being toxic to the body politic. I’m speaking specifically about all the ways racism manifests because it all impacts health – both mental and physical health.

For example, racial battle fatigue is one way to understand how racism impacts the health of people on the receiving end. While some may think RBF is just mental or emotional, it is much deeper than that. Research demonstrates how RBF (or racial trauma, race related stress, etc) impacts health in myriad ways. We’ve known for some time about intergenerational PTSD and how that changes the DNA structure of descendants of Holocaust survivors and African descendants of enslaved people. We are beginning to understand the health consequences of sustained racial trauma (and really we need to understand racialized trauma as the same as toxic stress, because that is what it is). It includes mental and physical health, and ages us faster – scholars call this weathering. Further, secondary trauma impacts us as well – watching others experience racialized abuses, supporting friends and colleagues experiencing racialized abuses, etc. 

And really, anyone who is willing to sacrifice someone’s mental wellbeing for some instant gratification (however that may be practiced) by ignoring their racist friends and family for some fake peace isn’t about the peace, nor the relationship with the person they put in harms way. Whether the racism rises to the level of Skinheads, KKK, Neo-Nazis, or another white terrorist group matters little to my bodily systems. My body knows when it’s in danger. It took me a long time to recognize this. And when the body believes it is in danger, it self-preserves itself out of protection. That self-preservation takes a very real toll on my health and will definitely shorten my life. Now, I am only one Black person – mixed and light skinned at that. My experiences with racism pale in comparison to the racism darker skinned Black women face – trying to just do their jobs, trying to just get their education, trying to just get groceries or gas, trying to just drive to a friend’s house, just living life.

One can think of these experiences as detritus one must step over on their way to a destination. Imagine having to climb mountains of detritus to just do the things all humans must do to live their lives. White people never have to deal with that. Sure, many may have to figure out how to climb their way out of poverty or any number of terrible situations just like humans everywhere. But they do not also need to figure out how to survive racism while trying to climb out of terrible situations.

Women usually warn other women when the man they are dating is a woman beater, a child molester, an alcoholic, or otherwise problematic person. Black people warn other Black people that the person they are hanging with is a racist, Neo-Nazi, white supremacist, or otherwise bigoted person. However, when Black people warn white people that the person they are with is racist, they usually get a shrug and a grunt in response. Or we get yelled at and ostracized from work spaces, social spaces, families, or friend groups becoming persona non grata. And if we’re Black, we are labeled angry, delusional, unserious, ignorant. The first one, the angry Black person, is a classic anti-Black colloquialism used for centuries playing on the lie that we are more violent than white people. The last three play into the lie of drapetomania – the convenient psychological condition enslavers made up to describe their enslaved people who dared dream of freedom and act upon it by running away.

So, to return to the beginning of this essay, the death of that racist white man has nothing to do with me. The folx on his apologia tour asking me, my people, any people impacted with his hateful words is a kind of gaslighting that is all too common in casual personal spaces. Some of these people are a Venn diagram of people I’ve known throughout my life who’ve downplayed the racism they brought around me. Which, did I mention how socializing kids in this way should be child abuse? Gaslighting children is a special kind of abuse. Gaslighting anyone speaking to their lived experiences is also a special kind of abuse. Perhaps one of the most evil kinds of gaslighting.

I don’t understand why it is so incredibly difficult for white people (especially but not exclusively) to sever ties with their racist friends, family, churches, and social groups. My only summation is that if they excised these people from their lives, they’d have few groups with which to commune. I know this because I know the circles of people I’ve been in most of my life growing up in white ass Washington State – less white today than when I was growing up – as such, I have an inordinate amount of white friends, acquaintances, and of course family. I know how hard and sad it can be to cut people out of your life. So, they make apologies for their racist uncle, apologize that you experienced that – if they notice and decide whatever happened was racism because white people are always the final judges of what is and is not racism. And that is so because that is how white people built racism over centuries to benefit them and their descendants. According to them, the people impacted by racism are never the best people to identify and gauge racism.

This is why many Black people can’t and will never trust white people, no matter how close of a relationship they may share. It’s what stops Black folx trusting the allyship of white folx. We know that we are rarely, if ever, safe around white people, no matter how well a friend or relative claims to know them. Even when best friends, white people make decisions to keep that racist friend or relative around. I can no longer abide that. Just like I don’t hang out with child molesters or folx who are friends with child molesters. Just like I don’t hang out with woman beaters or folx who are friends with woman beaters. Just like I don’t hang out with people who crime or folx who are friends with people who crime.

I can no longer be in relationship with folx who are racist enablers. That is for my own self-protection. That is for my peace. That is for my safety. And if people don’t get that, that is a them problem, not a me problem.