Dear Fellow White Queers

Dear Fellow White Queers,

We’ve made it to Pride Month. Against all odds—a global pandemic, government oppression, police brutality, mass tragedy, healthcare and economic crises, a never-ending election, isolation-induced time warps and, nightmare of all nightmares, murder hornets—we’re here. If you’ve managed to make it to this point with any semblance of sanity or normalcy, chances are you hold many privileges—and are good at compartmentalizing out of self-preservation.

If, like me, you’re trying to reconcile the emotional turmoil of infuriating racial injustice with the desperate need for some spark of Pride joy, this letter is for you. As queer people with a firsthand understanding of biased systems and sustained, draining fights for equality, we are uniquely positioned to empathize. And, as white people whose lives and livelihoods are not under constant attack on these particular systemic and personal levels, it’s our responsibility to take on this work. As Toni Morrison said, “If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

As a white queer person, I am constantly trying to learn and be better, and to contextualize my learning so that it might help others along in their journeys. Here, then, are my recommendations for leveraging our privilege to honor our history while working for our collective future:

Understand Context

Pride was a riot. The Compton’s Cafeteria riot, one of the pivotal acts of queer resistance in the United States, saw trans women push back against police after being brutally attacked for occupying a public space. Three years later, Stonewall—now frequently rewritten as an amicable, rainbow-colored celebration—was the site of multiple days of clashes between Black and Brown trans women and police. Nowadays, the legacy of Stonewall has been seized by corporate sponsors and scrubbed of its radical agenda; the Compton’s Cafeteria riot has largely receded from public memory. If you’re mourning the cancellation of Pride parades, I encourage you to redirect that energy into learning about our history.

Start Now, and Don’t Stop

We must continuously strive to understand the systemic, systematic, and personal ways we perpetuate white supremacy within our communities and outside of them, and actively work against it. Our role—without centering ourselves or mapping the oppression of gender and sexuality onto that of race—is to use our agency and our voices to call out injustice.

To do that, we must start with ourselves and unlearn the racist thoughts that have been ingrained in us since the day we were born. This is work that doesn’t end, and if you’re just coming into it now, I urge you again to start with history. Start by understanding the overlapping systems of oppression Black folks must exist within every day. We don’t have to advertise that we’re doing this work. We don’t have to post about it on social media or force it into conversation. We simply have to do it.

Most of us understand the disingenuous “support” of rainbow capitalism. Every June, brands suffocate our parades, feeds, and neighborhoods with rainbow advertisements (attracted, ironically, by the spending power the most privileged among us have acquired only after centuries spent rioting for our rights) while doing little of substance for our community. When companies perform the work instead of doing it, it’s clear—and we must be equally vigilant in calling out our own individual performative allyship. Insisting that we don’t support racist actors, advertising our own learning, and trying to prove ourselves anti-racist without taking any concrete action renders our words meaningless. Optical allyship helps sustain the very systems we claim to oppose, and we must be aware of our own tendencies toward it.

Show Up

In this moment, and in every moment of U.S. history leading up to this one, Black lives have been on the line. We know that white folks and Black folks are not treated the same by police, that our voices are not received in the same way, and that authority doesn’t react to us in the same way. As the last few weeks have reminded us, bodily autonomy and dignity are privileges in this country—and we, as people with those privileges, must weaponize them. To weaponize our privilege means to wield it radically in service of those who don’t hold them: If you have a platform, use it to lift up the voices of those who don’t. If you have wealth or access to wealth, offer it. If you have an able body, put it on the line. This is the work that our queer and trans ancestors did for our rights, and this is the work we must do now.

Hold Each Other Accountable

No matter how much work we do, there will always be more. As long as this system sustains our privilege, our freedoms will come at the expense of those who do not have them. We can’t change this system overnight, and we can’t change it without doing the work in our own communities and families. We must hold each other accountable, even—and especially—when it’s uncomfortable to do so. We must ensure that we’re able to be held accountable, and that we use these instances to learn rather than defend our own virtue. Challenging racist ideation is not pretty, glamorous, or trendy. It’s hard work, and to do it is to use the privilege we have—thanks to those who came before us—to work toward justice and liberation.

Pride is still a riot. Celebrate accordingly.