Tech Support Issue #3: the wokescolder's lament

Dear Tech Support,

I publicly called someone out this week who constantly lectures other white people on Twitter about not being woke enough despite a long history of treating me and others like total garbage IRL. Even still, I felt immediate remorse. Then anxiety. Then fear for my career and of being branded a troublemaker. And now I’m just tired. Was I right to call her out? Am I wrong to be so fed up with all the people DMing me that they agreed with what I said? Why did I have to be the one to say it? 

Best, 

Exhausted by Cancel Culture But Not In the Way White People Are

Dear Exhausted, 

My response to this swung a wild pendulum yesterday. In the morning, clutching a dog-eared copy of Rebecca Solnit’s “Whose Story Is This?” and absolutely SOARING on cold brew, I tapped out a manifesto about how the only thing that matters now is speaking up against injustice, speaking truth to the power, sharing our stories at any and all costs to ourselves and the people we name (“grab the mic, David, before Goliath clutches it back!” “they will say we’ve gone too far, and they will be wrong!”). In the lull of the afternoon I caught the virtuosic entire hour episode of Democracy Now with Angela Davis and started to zoom out a little (hmm okay maybe focusing *quite* so much on the individual victims and perpetrators is part of the whole neoliberal ruse…). By 11pm I was mainlining a toxic sluice of libertarian conspiracy theory tweets (can someone please explain ZeroHedge to me) about how this moment is actually a simulation/psyop (us all eating each other is what “they” want!) and nodding along like “sure, I could see that...” 

So, it’s a new day and we begin again at the beginning. (That I’m unable to form and hold opinions may be a ~structural problem~ here at Tech Support and I look forward to that being raised in the demands when the staff someday organizes/revolts.).

Were you right to call this person out? Oh totally, unequivocally yes. And I acknowledge how hard that is. When I “spoke my truth,” as it were, about retaliation at Google, I agonized over it. I wondered how I might have misinterpreted the situation or brought it upon myself. I feared for my future career prospects. I worried about hurting the feelings of the women in my management chain (the brazen villains in the story!) and even experienced flashes of pity for them for being such limited/unevolved beings (lol).

People without much power are capable of so much consideration of others (too much, probably, which is part of why we haven’t bushwhacked our way up to the C-Suite). And when we do stumble into a little bit of power–e.g. when people actually listen to us and join in the criticism of the people we’ve called out–we are so quick to wonder if we’ve abused that power. If only the people with actual power had that same sense of accountability to others (🎶and the world would be a better place….🎶)! As for you, the person who’d weathered the belittling and bad treatment, having to be the one who called it out and risked further harm and exclusion…yeah, well, that sucks. I wish it weren’t so. I hope there’s some cool comfort in knowing that you have courage and principles and that you’re undoubtedly inspiring others to acknowledge and push back on people treating people indecently (🎶put a little love in your heart….🎶).

But your story is also specifically about calling out hypocrisy, which should be celebrated as a clear and simple public good (and wow if anything could “unite America” it’s in the gleeful delight in roasting hypocrites–I identify as part troll and the Tavi Gevinson-calling-out-Karlie-Kloss-Kushner moment last week was huge for us). Hypocrisy is everywhere right now—always, I guess, but it’s especially thick in the pool of BLM posts and companies/executives eager to seem like they’re on the right side of things (or probably more actually, to not be seen as on the wrong side of things). Personally, I regret ever using the phrase “that’s rich” before reading “Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are ‘deeply disgusted and shaken’ by Trump’s rhetoric.'” Google’s CMO held a Racial Justice all hands this week and had Black Googlers read poems, but when it came to what she/Google are going to do to enact real change, she pointed to efforts to educate users through YouTube playlists (“Understanding Racial Justice” has 3k views) and dodged questions about how the TVC system in her department could be seen as fueling the class divide and why YouTube is literally swamped with Trump ads. “You’d think she was a random person with no power,” a friend recounted.

In a time when we’re glimpsing a veritable change to the status quo, a good use of time, imho, insofar as you’ve got some energy and wherewithal, is to remind people with power that they have power. Pressure, agitation, calling bullshit, it’s all good. I know that doing what you did, Exhausted, probably made you feel anything but powerful–but I promise that all together, it really is.

Have a query? askclairest@gmail.com

New avatar by the wonderful Manu Cornet!