Self-critique is revolutionary if you use it.
Can you imagine how much more effective communities would be if people actually just bucked the fuck up and said,
"What I said was antiblack and I shouldn't have said it. It hurt people and it was wrong. I'm sorry and thank you to the people who corrected me. I'll try harder next time."
wow
amazing
revolutionary
@alice Instead people write essays to backflip away from responsibility or "This isn't engagement. It's a witchhunt" when they're corrected. 🤦🏾
@guerrillablack @alice i'm currently reading berserk, and, i uh, i now know what a witchhunt looks like…
@guerrillablack Honestly how do I make it my life’s work to get more people into this, because it’s all I care about. But I think about it all the time and still catch myself getting defensive sometimes. I think offering more examples and ways of doing this is a helpful way to replace the defensiveness habit though.
@ORthey @guerrillablack A co-op I lived in had a "racism jar", if you said something racist you put a dollar in it and we used the money to pay for educational speakers.
It was not effective with the "I say what I want" problem housemate who inspired its creation. But for the rest of us, it was a *fantastic* way to normalize the idea that we all fuck up & you can+should apologize without taking center stage for a drawn-out soliloquy on white guilt.
@ORthey @guerrillablack my idea is desensitization: just call them racist for a few hours until the word loses its sting and they realize it's not the end of the world.
This would definitely not work but it's nice to think about sometimes.
@nev @guerrillablack I think that removing the idea of “racist” as a thing you “call” someone is a step in the right direction tbh. It’s not a thing you call someone, it’s a thing we all do sometimes bc racism is super normalized in our culture.
@ORthey @guerrillablack yeah, you're right
@guerrillablack so simple but yet revolutionary indeed ✊🏾
@guerrillablack right? especially when it was an honest, unintended mistake, there is no negative consequence that might keep one from doing this. you don’t lose face, credibility, standing, or whatever else i can imagine.
on the other hand, you *did* hurt somebody without meaning to, and that should put you in some state of alarm.
the usual dodgy flip-flopping is weak af sauce.
@guerrillablack half the time they dog a deeper hole before hiring the “crisis management firm” that would literally tell them the same thing!
@guerrillablack self review is also incredibly hrd emotional labor and the people avoiding it have built their wealth on farming emotional labor off onto the poor / ethnic minorities / women.
@guerrillablack this is how apologies should be done in general and I wish more people would put effort into them