“…the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice… Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Moderacy is a pervasive cancer of apathetic complicity that perpetuates cyclical violence by upholding the oppression of the status quo. To assert that “you aren’t political” is inherently a political stance, one that says, “I am too disconnected from the oppression of my relatives to concern myself with their suffering.”
Many well-intentioned white Americans have become so jaded with the system that they have decided it is better to be agents of continuity rather than join in the fight for collective liberation. So-called “apolitical” people or white moderate centrists, alike, who believe that “both parties have some good ideas,” are so entrenched in their trust in the American system that they fail to see the interconnectedness of oppression and its relation to the systemic subjugation they perpetuate by electing the same two parties. If the progression of the few is the oppression of the many, it is nothing more than societal regression.
The universal call for the freedom of all people transcends the manufactured divisions of race, religion and political affiliation that so heavily separates the people from uniting against a common oppressor: the white supremacist ruling class.
No social issue happens in a vacuum. The fight for abortion access is the same as the struggle for transgender bodily autonomy. Queer liberation and racial equity are one and the same. Labor union causes are deeply rooted in anti-capitalist ideologies. The movement for police and prison abolition is the same as abolishing ICE and dismantling our discriminatory immigration system. Poor white people have been so indoctrinated by conservative propaganda that they vote against their own interests for politicians who use their tax dollars for war profiteering rather than universal health care, housing, infrastructure or education initiatives. Working-class white people are also victims of racial capitalism. The white elite convinces them that their enemies are immigrants and other oppressed people of color to distract them from the massive wealth inequality that they, too, suffer from. Nothing delights a corporate billionaire more than when uneducated white people blame immigrants for stealing the jobs that they refuse to pay living wages for, so they exploit undocumented labor. Liberal white people also feed into Democrat propaganda by electing politicians whose policies are indistinguishable from those of the far right.
People of color are just as propagandized. We vote blue every election simply because they aren’t as outspoken about their bigotry. Yet, John F. Kennedy authorized CIA-led coups in Cuba and Iraq (which killed thousands) to further the U.S.’s imperialistic aims. Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill strengthened the “superpredator myth” and led to the largest mass incarceration of Black and Brown men in our nation’s history. Barack Obama deported over 3.1 million people (more than any other U.S. president), did little for Black Americans and massacred civilians with his drone strikes in the Middle East. Joe Biden continues Trump-era immigration policies, including funding the wall, and is currently funneling billions of taxpayer dollars into Israel’s illegal land grab and ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine. We sparsely show up for movements we see as separate causes without recognizing the way they are intricately tied to one another.
Fostering an ideology of collective liberation beyond partisan bickering is the only long-term solution in an oligarchical society designed to keep the wealth of the ultra-rich consolidated by squeezing the working class for everything they produce. The powerful try to stifle us with fear-politics because they are afraid of the masses mobilizing against them. Ours is the struggle for an anti-racial capitalist future that values people above corporate profit. It is an end to the chokehold that the Democrat and Republican duopoly has on our political system, upheld by a carceral system that is enforced by an unjust police surveillance state.
Every election cycle we perpetuate the two-party system by feeding into the lie that only two parties can win. Democrats are no better than their right-wing counterparts when they vote for the same policies and take money from the same donors while upholding the same oppression. A third party would only need 20% of Americans to support it to qualify as a major political party, which would undoubtedly challenge both major parties. We cannot continue to settle for the violence of the status quo just to avoid the right-wing Christofascist theocracy we’re already barreling toward under Democratic politicians.
Be it through religious beliefs, radical love and genuine care for others, your morals or even the shame and guilt of not having done enough, I urge you to involve yourself in the movement for collective liberation. The complicity of the white moderate who agrees with the cause but is unwilling to contribute or publicly commend resistance is more detrimental to oppressed peoples than the hatred of a Neo-Nazi.
The silent majority, as MLK calls them, have the same effect as those who perpetrate oppression because their inaction is a passive acceptance of the unjust violence of the status quo. It is these same moderates who would quickly condemn the destruction of property, but not the heavily militarized police who incite riots and brutalize non-violent protesters. The recorded police lynching of an unarmed Black man absolutely merits mass protests and escalated action. A corporation’s shattered window can be easily repaired, but an innocent life cannot be.
U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell, who lit himself on fire and died in protest of the United States’ role in Israel’s 76-year-long genocide in Palestine, said it best: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
Willful ignorance is not an excuse to intentionally ignore oppression. In this age of technology with information at your fingertips, there is no excuse not to be aware and get involved.
Your level of privilege as a white person in majority white spaces cannot be understated. You will never be stereotyped as the “angry Brown man” as I am. Use your status to effect change and break out of the bystander mentality by being public about your beliefs. Call out your white peers when you bear witness to instances of discrimination, but do not allow yourself to decenter the voices and lived experiences of those who you are standing in solidarity with. Your activism must go beyond supporting a charitable cause with a self-righteous white-savior mentality or simply reposting an infographic on your Instagram story; rather, engage in mutual aid and social media activism in conjunction with tangible actions.
Do not pity the oppressed; stand with us.
To fight for oppressed peoples, you must be unrelenting in your support for our perpetual struggle for freedom. Overcome your white fragility by learning from Black, Brown and Indigenous activists while unlearning the biased history ingrained in you as a child. Read political theory and the movements and revolutions inspired by it. Then, apply those theories and teachings by taking steps to do your part: attend a protest, boycott companies invested in the war machine, abandon both major parties by voting third party or uncommitted, contact your elected officials and educate other white people. Here is a list of books to start educating yourself.
There is no bigger obstacle to the liberation of oppressed peoples than a complicit majority. Have the courage to stand with us in word AND in deed.