More and more I'm convinced that Frerie was right: it's not simply that oppressors (defined broadly) don't believe the oppressed about their experience, they don't trust that we have anything resembling knowledge about our own experience. (1/n)

Let me put this another way: folks can have concrete, quantifiable evidence of inequality, of structural oppression, of systemic violence, and still not believe the oppressed when we talk about the experiences that give rise to the very data they've (or we've) collected. (2/n)

This isn't a matter of faith (except in the Jamesian sense), but a matter of trust. Oppressors simply do not trust that we know what the fuck we're talking about when we explain our experience of oppression. And this lack of trust is endemic to the situation of oppression. (3/n)

And because it is endemic, we have to explain again and again, using multiple formats. Even then, its not the oppressed that the oppressor trusts, but the media or the methodology that makes present the experience of the oppressed in a format that can be trusted. (4/n)

Put simply: they don't trust us, but they do trust the method, the epistemology, the format, the purportedly objective presentation of our suffering, specifically when it is not directly connected to us except as an object of study, as depersonalized and decontextualized. (5/n)

Now, oppressors might trust the data, depending on the source, and use their trust in the data as grounds for decision making that does not involve the lived experience of the oppressed. These "data driven" responses to oppression allow for avoiding trusting the oppressed. (6/n)

They also don't require taking seriously what the oppressed recommend as remedies to their oppression. All of the remedies that proceed from an oppressor's "understanding" and not from trusting the oppressed are remedies that do not transform the situation of oppression. (7/n)

Hence, institutions will look at the data on their own oppressive conditions and arrive at a plan of action that benefits the institution, but does not resolve the situation of oppression. In fact, said plan of action may make worse the situation of oppression. (8/n)

Part of this is that oppressed folks aren't viewed as objective about their experience, where "objectivity" is constructed in the image of the oppressor; and part of it is that trusting the oppressed would involve ceding the privilege to define the shape of the world. (9/n)

The latter is something we've done to death; the former is something we rarely think about. The privilege of being an oppressor is the ability to not only define the world for themselves, but to define the world for everyone else and to define how the world is experienced. (10/n)

Trusting the oppressed would be to give up that right, to recognize that there are other ways of experiencing the world, other contextualizations of experience, which is something that oppressors cannot give up. To do so would be to become complicit in oppression. (11/n)

It would strip the possibility that the oppressors are not involved with the oppression of the oppressed, the pleasure taken in being "good," and would force them to grapple with the fact that there are ways of knowing the world that they do not have complete access to. (12/n)

Which is why we see responses like "this isn't my America," or "this isn't the country I know," or "these aren't the people I know," which are all lies told to shield the oppressor from the truth of the world. (13/n)

So, for me, when an oppressor of any stripe questions the truth of an experience of oppression, it is a sign that they are unable to trust the oppressed's understanding of their experience. Which gets me to Frerie's ultimate conclusion: solidarity requires trust. (14/n)

If an "ally" cannot trust the oppressed about our own experience of oppression, our own understanding of how to resolve our oppression, then how can we trust them to stand in solidarity with us?

We can't, and that's the point. You want to be an ally? start by trusting us. (fin)