a response to white fat activism from People of Color in the fat justice movement

afrotitty:

queerfathungry:

“This letter is written to our fat community to express great concern over what appears to be a growing divide among us.”

I am done with racism being glossed over. I am done with being tokenized. I am done with being silenced.

This is a super important conversation. Please go read this letter, NOW. Read it again. I learned at least three things I didn’t know before by reading this letter, and probably a lot more.

I will be the first to admit that I am not perfect. My efforts to be a good ally to QPOC fail as often as my efforts to be a good ally to POC who are fat/fat activists fail.

Some of the experiences I had this year moderating Fatshion February/some of the responses to the push that Mary and I made to intentionally seek out POC to reblog instead of reblogging everything that came across tagged involved a lot of negative feedback from white fat people. This is a space where I’d like to see us doing some growing together, fats who are white.

We know that it is hard to access media that represents us/to see images that we feel resonate with our experiences. We spend a lot of time and effort on projects which do a better job of representing us. Let’s not leave people of color in the dust here, OK? We have/should have come too far (as a queer community, as feminists, as allies) to be making these mistakes again. Let’s help one another be accountable by making the extra effort, by calling one another out when we see problematic shit happening/when we see that a project is not inclusive of POC. We shouldn’t be waiting for someone else to call this out for us.

I know that I can, and will, do more on these fronts. Help keep me accountable in my projects, and in my personal organizing work (if you know me there). Let’s help one another answer this enormously generous call for action.

xo jessiedress