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I’m going to ask you to bear w/ me bc this is lengthy. While it may seem to speak directly to my interactions w/ @JonathanMerritt, it is more a statement on race and gender dynamics & how white men use private exchanges with Women of Color as public shields against critique.
On July 28, @ChrisHeuertz shared the questionable findings of the @gravitycenter investigation that supposedly exonerated him & JM congratulated him—making a point to say how facts matter to him as a journalist followed by a problematic statement.
Someone responded to JM w/ my thread explaining why the investigation was questionable & so I responded directly to JM in said, as someone who knows him as a fellow writer, I expected better. Rather than directly engage me, he chose to RT me in order to publicly condescend to me.
This devolved into an increasingly hostile convo where he spoke down to me and accused me of various things that were untrue (Behavior he managed to refrain from w/ men). I, within my right, defended myself & told him to stop disrespecting me & went so far as to use profanity.
There are those who will see our behavior as on par with one another but I would ask you to interrogate why you are inclined to dictate how a person chooses to defend themselves when they are publicly attacked—
—particularly when that person is a Woman of Color being condescended to buy a white man who then RT’d that attack for their much larger (70K) following to engage. Essentially speaking over and around but not to her.
Thankfully, and I’ll admit surprisingly, the pile-on I braced myself for did not come and I was mostly met with support (much gratitude to all who did that). Still, JM did not let up and dug his heels in for most of the evening. For my own peace of mind, I blocked him.
On July 30, he posted an “apology“ thread. I would not have known about it except that he tagged me and others tagged me in it repeatedly asking if he had actually apologized to me directly.
He had not.
He had not.
This is where we get to the interesting part that I think it’s really important to name regardless of any outcome with JM and myself (of which I’m not particularly interested in if I’m honest at this point).
In the thread, he talks about having honest friends who have the tough convos w/ him & how they came to him about the way he spoke to me & others & how this included Women of Color that did the hard work of correcting him & reminding him that it matters how he engages other WoC.
What he is naming here is actually a very specific phenomena and I wanted to speak to them. But first…
When I saw his thread, I immediately shared that, though I blocked him, we have mutual friends & he could easily access other forms of contacting me should he want to do that.
When I saw his thread, I immediately shared that, though I blocked him, we have mutual friends & he could easily access other forms of contacting me should he want to do that.
I made it clear that I was open to restorative practices.
That night a friend reached out and asked if he could share my email with JM and I immediately said yes and he told me he would share it with him in the morning and he did.
That night a friend reached out and asked if he could share my email with JM and I immediately said yes and he told me he would share it with him in the morning and he did.
Note: It was also not lost on me that the friend that JM had reach out to me was another white man.
So I have waited a week. A week from the time that JM posted his online public“ apology“.
So I have waited a week. A week from the time that JM posted his online public“ apology“.
The apology which received so many accolades and praise and numerous people accepting the apology on my behalf. It has been a week of silence. I have not heard anything from him and I don’t expect that I ever well and this is what I am talking about.
I’ve been that WoC that a white man reaches out to after he publicly messes up. I’ve done the behind the scenes labor to correct & teach only to have that man turn around & use me as a shield against criticism & that, my friends, is an act of racism.
It’s offensive & it is an abuse of the women who did the labor.
Pointing to those convos & those private relationships w/o taking the wisdom that WoC give you & applying it to your life, & letting it change the way in which you engage other PoC publicly, is manipulative & wrong.
Pointing to those convos & those private relationships w/o taking the wisdom that WoC give you & applying it to your life, & letting it change the way in which you engage other PoC publicly, is manipulative & wrong.
That is white supremacy. That’s you deciding that the relationship functions on your terms and to your benefit & it is a form of pitting one Person of Color against another.
It’s also nothing new. It’s not a one-time experience for me & I know others who’ve had it done to them.
It’s also nothing new. It’s not a one-time experience for me & I know others who’ve had it done to them.
This is why I ask you to be more discerning & more cautious about how quick you are to receive these public apologies & shower people w/ grace & accolades that may not be yours to offer. It is not hateful for ppl to hold others accountable & ask ”did you actually make amends?”
Lastly, on the matter I will say this, the reason I’m not personally concerned with an apology from JM is that his tone was not the biggest issue in the first place. Any apology I received would’ve been about tone because that’s what the public “apology” was about.
His tone was a whole mess but his tone was not the serious issue. Do not let it distract from what the problem was. The problem was victim-blaming, protecting an abuser, & using one’s role as a journalist to dismiss women, predominantly WoC, as unreliable & untrustworthy.
I know I just wrote you a novel and I probably could’ve written so much more. I’m sure there are things I left out but I hope I hit the important points. Thank you for hearing me on this.
