The woke wars

Jason Jones’ LGBT rights victory in April showed that minority communities benefit from the support of mainstream allies. When #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo emerged, the campaigns generated a good deal of support (as well as predictable backlash) but recently, in the scramble to out-woke each other, the woke warriors are pushing allies away, rather than embracing them.

Who do I mean by the woke warriors? This tweet, by a young black American woman with the twitter handle @lilserotoninn sums it up:

“A white girl just tried to talk to me in this gay bar. We gay but we not that gay sis.”

Now, I must admit I found the tweet funny, as did thousands of re-tweeters, but people in the comments thread were less impressed. The tweet speaks to a number of themes pertinent to the angst of non-mainstream lifestyles in the millennial generation. It implies that because of the current polarisation of racial politics, gay solidarity goes out the window if you’re white (subtext: “a white devil ready to call 911 on our asses”). It hints that the stereotype of sexual promiscuity within LGBT circles is irrelevant, because the tweeter has self-imposed a colour bar. More seriously, it speaks to those people of colour who have historically experienced racism within gay communities, as well as within straight communities in dating environments.

Her rebuttal of the white girl was her f--- you to race-based sexual hierarchies.

Some found the tweet racist. Change the word white for black and that’s racism, they claimed.

I found myself defending the tweet, even though technically I didn’t agree with it. White people, now and for the past… hmmm… let’s just say forever... have held power and privilege over non-white people. Just as men have held more power than women, straight people more than gay people, CIS over gender non-binary, and so forth.

My argument in support of the tweet was that, while it was obviously extreme, we live in extreme times. Okay, not as extreme as the past – the KKK aren’t firebombing churches, women can vote, homosexuals aren’t receiving electroshock therapy, yadda yadda – but extreme enough for minorities to feel scared and angry about where the world is heading.

In that extreme past, the warriors who fought for equality, the Black Power movement, Suffragettes, Stonewall rioters et al, were openly hostile to their perceived oppressors – white straight men – often blanketly so.

For today’s woke warriors, that hostility is still justified. But how helpful is that outlook?

When the UK Guardian recently invited Gal Dem, a website produced by women of colour, to edit their Weekend magazine, one writer talked about her dating experiences trying to find Mr Woke. To score above 65 per cent on her ‘woke-o-meter’ she quipped, you must, among other things, “know reverse racism isn’t real.”

There isn’t space to fully unpack the reverse racism debate here, but briefly... I know that insults, exclusion or discrimination aimed at white people will never carry the same weight as they do to people of colour. And the intersectionality of wealth and privilege with colour will continue to be a live debate in countries like TT until material and social equality is achieved. But if you are white and you feel that black people are treating you unfairly because of your colour – what is the word for that?

Moreover, if you are a white “ally,” whose work celebrates or supports black people, how does it feel to come under attack from people you are politically aligned with?

In recent weeks, a white filmmaker and a white journalist were put under the microscope by the woke warriors here in Trinidad. The nature and quality of their work was side-lined in favour of a critique of their demographic and discussions about how their colour-privilege enabled their access to resources and blinkered them from knowing the reality of life in Trinidad. The woke warriors moved as a pack. No quarter was given. The two white professionals were apparently fair game for criticism. No acknowledgement of what they, as foreigners (one is Spanish, the other American) had contributed to Trinidadian society was conceded. It was “nothing personal,” the warriors insisted when I waded in to defend the white folk. But to those on the receiving end, it was hurtful. Both are advocates of everything the woke warriors believe in. Attacking them pushes away valuable allies.

In another recent clash, a Trini activist who clumsily posted that he would be a lesbian if he was a woman (because men are trash) was told that his statement was laced with indulgence and male privilege.

True, perhaps. But that riposte… another severed alliance?

I understand the frustration of intellectual black women not getting the props they deserve, but gunning for easy targets who immerse themselves in Trinidadian culture is counter-productive. Aim instead at the expats and Trinis of all races who are uninterested in the culture, totally unwoke and totally milking the country dry.