Gotta love the Rhythm Heaven reference.

In the past few weeks, I have received a handful of interactions from White pagans or White people in general about the current events. None of them are talks that are what one could call “fruitful” because I certainly got zero out of the conversation (actually, probably less than zero – I really could have done without those interactions) but it’s the usual suspect: White folks who want to be slow-walked through “how racism works” or plain rather pretend to be your friend, even though you have never met them before. Basically the “Kind douchebag/douchebag with a smile” type.

Look, as far as readership goes, I have two relatively consistent White readers who I reasonably like because they are reasonable people, Mark and Calysta. Everyone else White and interacting are usually a major bother and those people are quite agitating because this is a Black blog, meant for Black Pagans, such as myself. There are countless Pagan blogs and media made by White Pagans but no, got to be over here, bothering spaces that they are not welcomed in because they are unwelcoming, themselves.

One interaction was on Twitter, when I posted about “Eyes on the Prize”. Read below:

Here is why I, and probably others, find this annoying:

I have many academic friends, one of them talks pretty regularly about the Holocaust. It’s is their diamond topic, they know it forwards and backwards. They like to talk about media and the Holocaust – mainly how the Holocaust is depicted, who is focused on, etc. Now, they don’t mind having talks about the subject, it is what they do. They have an insightful tangent on the movie Schindler’s List that is really interesting to hear. However, they still would not want to deal with someone who just walks up and go “Schindler’s List, I know about that movie. I love that movie,” and that’s it. Yeah, the movie has great cinematography, buuuuuuuuuuuut in a somber discussion about the Holocaust and how media makes people perceive it, that is not the appropriate time to bring it up. Long story short, if you don’t have anything useful to say then:

Same thing here. The dude could have kept his trap shut and all would be fine. Instead of interjecting pointless bullsh*t that mainly is for self-pandering reasons (“Look at what a good person I am! I’m a good White person!”). I have never been a fan of virtue signaling. Ever.

And why are White folks “thanking” Black people now for “opening their eyes”? I have gotten that quite a bit lately and I’m not the only one. Soooooooooooooooooooo … they still think we’re NPCs in their lives, huh? Walking life lessons and not humans, huh? How unsurprising. They kill us, we bring up killing us is wrong and we get thanked (no actual change, just phony, flimsy words) for … pointing out they are killing us. But should something happen to them, like a suburban mass shooting, they want the whole world to stop & care. It is already appalling that they lack so much empathy that it takes several murders, accompanied with HD photos and film, complete with sound, to figure out that there might be a problem and that racism might still be around. Now they treat those very same people who simply are talking about their lived life experiences (usually to people who share those same experiences) like that person’s traumas exists to educate White folks of how to be “better people”.

I’m cis and hetero-romantic (ace/demi but still het-romantic). I have heard queer and trans friends talk about their lives, good and bad. It did not take me the Pulse mass shooting to figure out that my friends are actual people and that murdering them for who they are is inherently wrong. I came to that conclusion without scores of people dying in very brutal ways. When they vent to me about the difficulties of dating, existing or, heck, how the mass shooting still alarms them to this very day, I don’t reply with “I never thought of that, thank you for sharing!”

‘Thank you for sharing?’ That’s pretty tone deaf and it would be beyond reasonable that they would probably not want to be my friend anymore because they’re talking about their lives and concerns and the best they got in reply is a “Thank you for your input, I will find this data most valuable to me”-type reply. They don’t feel heard, they feel used. I don’t think I have ever thanked any of them for talking about their lives as human beings because they were not offering me anything, they were simply talking about their day or their date. Nobody likes to feel like a science project when they’re just being themselves. It is completely one-sided. Doesn’t matter if they are a friend, doesn’t matter if they are a stranger.

But a lot of that is definitely going on. Have my queer & trans friends taught me new perspectives and ideas? Yeah, but so have my friends who are not very different from me. Friends teach you things, that’s part of friendship. Strangers teach you things, that’s part of living on a planet with other people. However, thanking someone for teaching you how to change a tire the right way is different from thanking someone for teaching you why you should not murder them or that they are, indeed, a human being. The former is reasonable and the latter is a sign that there is a sociopath in the room.

Racial murders of Black people are not new, they have been around for literal centuries. So has anti-Black racism. So have been people who have been talking about it at length. Trying to pretend to be a friend is not helpful, it is agitating. It’s borne from trying to look good, not from actual desire to learn and/or self-improve. This “pretend friend” thing is coming from people who are late to the party but still want it to be about them. If anything, instead of feigning allyship, it is simply better to zip it. If you have nothing of value to add – then do what the game says and close your yap. You don’t even have to press a single button.