I really really wish that people with an academic understanding of race and class would talk to poor white people before they had shit to say about which white people the panthers worked with

Look me in my working eye and ask me do I know anything about this

Meantime folks are out here claiming class solidarity with folks who’d skin me for a race traitor because there’s rich white people and poor white people and that’s it

It’s a true thing that if ever logic wins over prejudice and if people can be made to understand they don’t have to be better than to have value then the ruling class will have a problem

But my lord we ain’t there yet and I’m fairly certain everyone but white folk knew that then

the trouble the class first people have is that the respectable sort of white people don’t show up in a crisis lest they be seen as consorting with those below

We who never wanted respectability ain’t give a fuck what our reputations are which is definitionally not respectable

The panthers worked with radicals who probably got brought up a way and were in modern terms problematic same as I am

But working with people who don’t mind admitting what they’ve got to unlearn ain’t even close to cozying up to white supremacy

It’s a lot of white people at the daytime protests where it’s peace and clergy and vigorous chanting.

It’s a lot of white people who show up for the smashy smashy when their parents have gone home

But it’s nearly uniformly working-poor white people around when it counts.

And I promise you that last group? The reason they’re there is because they already looked left and right and thought well I might be white trash but I ain’t gotta be the racist kind

That’s not class solidarity

That’s a leaning towards justice

People confuse the two because then they can say they’re fighting for the working man