I find it sad how often I find provisional acceptance within safe white spaces because my speech and deportment are perceived as an affectation, an engagement in “pick-me” social dynamics. It's doubly tragic, when it becomes clear I am not the safe, non-challenging Black face — and white fragility and passive aggression give rise to a façade of emotional calm and passive-aggressive rhetorical sophistry. If you are Black, and think I’m cooning and deluding myself about it, my DM is always open, use the email for this account. For non-Black people who don’t know, “Cooning” is not so much a slur, but a critique of Black people who engage in anti-Blackness, throwing Black people under the bus for personal gain. It is not saying that person is not Black because only Black people can be a “coon” or engage in “cooning”. Other disenfranchised communities have their equivalent. There can be intersectionality, such as a transgender person who carries water for, defends anti-Trans individuals or communities, patriarchy, as well as anti-Blackness. They often fall back on some point of the Mantan Manifesto, like claiming they can’t be anti-Black because they are Black (can’t be anti-Trans because they are trans), and the conservative apologetic “we are not one cultural monolith”. Note: Mantan Manifesto summary explanation, and video clip https://reddit.com/user/AnMuiren/comments/19210pi/spike_lees_bamboozled_the… The physical violence of white supremacy could not exist without the cover of polite white supremacy, and denial by a majority of white Americans across the political spectrum is a major barrier to change. Throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, the leadership of every white led progressive leaning institution I’ve spoken too has told me they cannot organize inclusive outreach programs because that would be political action and endanger their 501(c)(3) status. Kicking Jake to the curb for allegedly putting his foot in it doesn’t magically prove the rest of you are not white supremacist just because you are better at self-regulation. And as Jake and others have inferred, a vaguely defined anti-Racist goal without a plan is only a wish. Nearly every Sudo Room member I’ve spoken to, has defended an assumed right to be self-serving, individualistic, extractive members. To me, it appears members want a McDonald’s drive-thru brand of progressive politics and a space white space, free of uncomfortable, messy human complexity. Refusing to be vulnerable and socially invest means whites and minorities with proximity to whiteness cannot be trusted to accept the unavoidable discomfort and risks that come with subverting and dismantling the system of racialized class hierarchy promoted by law, commerce, and custom. This selfishness rationalized as virtuous freedom, the mythology of rugged individualists who have objectively earned their place in the world, is a willful self-deception. The reality of American Exceptionalism, is a projected image of being responsible, while avoiding the fact, Tom Sawyer’s Whitewashing the Fence scheme, writ large across a dystopian, colonial landscape. The difference is that Tom Sawyer faced those hard truths about himself and grew up. Note: Tom Sawyer Whitewashing the Fence summary explanation https://storyboardthat.com/lesson-plans/the-adventures-of-tom-sawyer-by-mar…