This year I checked “attend Netroots Nation” off of my bucket list after spending a week in Atlanta in August. (Really? Atlanta in August?) Although I didn’t get to see much of the city, the conference itself provided plenty of stimulation and inspiration. On the final day I was torn between attending a panel discussion on domestic terrorism and Islamaphobia, or a workshop titled “Diversity is for White People: Strategies for Organizing Against White Supremacist Violence.” This took place on Saturday afternoon, shortly after Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, giving the latter workshop an urgency not shared by the panel discussion.
Or so I thought.
Although the moderator had written “All White People are Racist” on a white board, the program noted that the workshop was intended for all audiences so I (a white person) took a seat. During the discussion period a young black woman, whose mother was white, spoke about the need for cutting white people, including her mother, out of her life. Later, after she introduced the topic of paying reparations, a couple of white people suggested that she needed to more clearly define what she meant by “reparations.” That appeared to be a trigger for her because she went off on a strong, angry, anti-white people rant. Basically, she claimed that we were taking up too much space in the room.
It was surprising to hear black separatist talk at a Netroots Nation workshop. Her anger was deep and rich. As I wandered through the conference later that afternoon and encountered other black women, I found myself wondering if they, too, saw me as the enemy—simply because of the color of my skin. Then I was struck by the fact that that may have been the story of her anger: that need to check one’s behavior due to the color of one’s skin. All of the time.