White people need to stop trying to fool ourselves and others with the myth that we’re only racist bc we just “don’t know any better.” It’s a flight to innocence and it’s bullshit. We’ve always known. We aren’t racist bc we’re ignorant. We’re racist bc we think it’s justified.

Let me show you what I mean, using myself as an example. I didn’t used to support prisons bc I just “didn’t know how bad they were.” How bad they were has been plastered all over the media my whole life. I used to support prisons bc I thought the their violence was justified.

I thought that the people who got put in prisons deserved their punishment for breaking the law. Every time I saw a glimpse into the violent control enacted on prisoners, I believed that that was the only means by which I could be protected from *those* people.

I wasn’t ignorant of that. I also have never been ignorant of the fact that this country is grounded on the genocide and displacement of Indigenous people. I’ve also always known that people work in terrible working conditions to make my life possible. All white people know this.

Was it taught to me at a young age in ways to make me feel like those things were justified? Absolutely, and I’m not dismissing the importance of that. However, that’s what’s going on with white racism. It’s NOT that we’re ignorant. We don’t get to let ourselves off the hook.

White people have some serious accountability to do. All of us. Not for our ignorance, but for the fact that we have NOT been ignorant. We have excused violence because we thought it was correct, regardless of whatever fucked up justification we used to believe that.

Liberatory education has absolutely played an essential part in learning how to not be as racist and how to engage in the struggle intentionally and do less harm, but coming to consciousness wasn’t by learning history correctly. It began with me fundamentally changing my values.

I say all this bc I keep seeing other white people on here selling themselves the myth that they became less racist bc they were shown the errors of their ways, and they want to use that personal innocence myth to try to reform other whites they see as also “just ignorant.”

Let me tell you: you aren’t going to be able to actually do shit if you haven’t deconstructed that myth. That’s not how working with other white racists works. We don’t need people to start out with a history lesson, we need people to actively challenge our justifications.

Can history play a part in it? Sure. But racist white people hurling slurs and advocating for people to be thrown in prison and concentration camps aren’t suffering from ignorance. They know exactly how this system works. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so strongly invoking it.