Your Complaint Will Have to Wait

I am here to tell you that your feelings matter. But that your complaint may have to wait.

Feeling upset at that time when an angry person lashed out at you for white privilege or fragility, even though you were just expressing an opinion?… It hurts. Maybe it was even uncalled for. Your complaint will have to wait.

Anxious that monuments to white men might get torn down, even though the guy (it’s always a guy) did some good alongside the slaves he owned or the indigenous people he displaced?… I understand it feels scary and out of control. What will they come for next, you may wonder? Your complaint will have to wait.

That hard-earned promotion you feel you were passed over for as a white person because of your company’s commitment to Diversity and Inclusion?… It sucks to feel that way. It really sucks. Your complaint will have to wait.

See, here’s the thing, when you ask for such complaints as a white man to be given attention, you are asking for your feelings to be prioritized over centuries of systemic racial and misogynistic abuse against millions of people that continues to this day. So yes, I’m sorry, but your complaint will have to wait.

Look, I get it. It isn’t always fair. I was unjustly maligned by a wounded Karen at the height of the #metoo movement who tore into my faith in people. But my pain and the enduring misogyny of the patriarchy are not the same. It’s 2020, and women face sexism and microaggressions on a daily basis that most men don’t even fathom. It’s 2020, and sexual abuse remains vastly under reported and difficult to prosecute. It’s 2020, and women are still vastly underrepresented in corporate boardrooms and carry a disproportionate weight of domestic labor. It’s 2020, and we still don’t have a woman as President of the United States.

There’s a false equivalency that the alt-right likes to perpetuate, which is that wrongdoing by the left is the same as wrongdoing by the right. The Horseshoe Theory argues that the tactics and harmful behaviors of extremism on both ends can begin to resemble one other, and I think that’s correct. But to compare the plight and pain of black people, immigrants, LGBQT, women, and minorities with that of white men is not the same. White men continue to dominate the halls of power and privilege, are well represented in monuments present and past, and generally don’t face the same levels of daily microaggressions and intergenerational trauma that others do. Until that changes, to equate the grievances of the left and the right even when there are excesses on both ends is a gross false equivalency.

Some of the most powerful social justice work that privileged individuals can do is to set aside their own pain and complaints, however valid they may think it it is, to make room for the pain and grievances of others.

When I watch the video of Kimberly Jones, who famously said, “they are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge,” I feel compassion for the pain she speaks of on behalf of millions of people over many centuries. The broken social contract. The skepticism that anything will change, short of burning it all down. Do you feel that compassion, or are you drawn to your complaint over how it feels misdirected or even dangerous? Can you channel your energy away from whatever complaint you might have about what she’s saying or how she’s saying it, and towards offering solutions that don’t kick the can down the road? Again. Or maybe can you just listen?

Can you be the first to say that as a privileged person, your complaint can wait?

Does this mean that we need to abide by collateral damage that is caused when those with righteous grievances overreach and do harm? When the wrong statue gets pulled down or an activist harms a bystander? Of course not. Trauma and privilege can be two sides of the same coin, each leading to a callous disregard for others’ pain in defense of our own. Movements die when they overreach and when those who support them don’t hold their own to accountability. Leaders of Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements should call in or speak out against the excesses of their own movement, lest they begin to lose credibility. But this is the work for the people who ardently support the movement, not those who oppose it.

For those withholding support and voicing complaints that the fight against injustice is inconvenient to you, I’m terribly sorry but your complaint will simply have to wait.