I'm here, and as far as I remember I've been open and honest about who I am on the board and everywhere else. I'm pretty sure anyone who's ever interacted with me here is well aware that I'm white so I don't think it should be a secret to anyone who's been around.

I hesitate to call myself an "ally" because IMO that's not really for me to decide. I try to just say that I'm always working *toward* being an ally.

I've been on my own journey of unraveling my own privilege and confronting it since at least high school. I learned of police brutality through my love of hip-hop and the culture - which started in elementary school, though I clearly wouldn't have really understood it until about high school or maybe late middle school - and wrote several papers about racism in policing and police brutality starting I believe my sophomore year.

I was then, and am now, far from perfect. So I'm constantly working to recognize and confront my implicit biases, privilege, and actions as I become or am made aware of them. I learned from my 60s-activist mother (god rest her soul) to always have my mind open to new ideas, and to adjust my ideologies and behaviors accordingly.

Re: your point about people like me feeling comfy offering critiques about issues that mostly impact the black community, I try and just listen most of the time. Case in point this very board. I wrestle with myself because I read *all* the posts in their entirety (recent example being the Defund the Police thread you started) but I actively try and stay out of the conversations unless I have a new and/or appropriate perspective to add. Mostly I chime in just to confirm my agreement with points already made. I'm there to listen. But I wrestle with myself because I'm obviously active on the board in general, so I don't want it to appear that my absence in those posts is because I don't care. It's the opposite, I very much do care and am always present in those posts - it's just not my place.

In terms of the work I'm putting in, I can always do more and want to. But my wife and I live in one of the (if not *the*) most diverse neighborhoods in Boston and that was intentional. We wanted to be sure we practiced what we preach. Dating back to 2014 I signed up for and have consistently donated to BLM and several other organizations fighting against systemic racism and for equality and racial justice. I've attended numerous local meetings in my neighborhood about police brutality and racism in Boston many times since we moved to this neighborhood. I've sat down and worked with a friend of my cousin's, who's a councilman in my neighborhood, to support various causes aimed at reforming the police and eradicating racist policies and procedures in the city. I've attended countless rallies and protests and marches since we moved here, including a bunch these past few weeks; one on Juneteenth and a few before that obviously in response to the George Floyd murder. I've canvassed neighborhoods and phonebanked for local and national politicians who fight for racial justice and whose policies align with those ideals, and will again this year.

I'm also obnoxiously loud to both my more conservative friends and family members about these issues. I never, ever let an inappropriate or outright racist comment go unchecked in my presence. I never have. I've lost "friends" over it dating back to college but I've always thought: fuck them if they can't handle it. This is too important. On the other side of the coin, a more conservative/moderate friend of mine who I've argued with for years about politics and systemic racism, recently unenrolled from the republican party and gave me a good deal of credit for that decision. A mutual friend of ours is still firmly in the conservative camp, so now this first friend has joined me in arguing against him and pointing out his biases since he (and I, to some extent in the past) used to share them. Hopefully we'll achieve similar results. We've definitely moved the needle a lot with him in the past month, but there's still a lot of work to do.

I am still learning and always will be, and still want to do more. And like I said, far from perfect. But I'm here and am trying to be active.


>For the white people that post here..who are you? are you
>allies to this struggle? are you truly doing the work of
>wrestling with how you benefit from your privilege and taking
>actions to unlearn your internalized white supremacy and be
>more antiracist?
>
>If the answer is yes, and you have the courage, please reveal
>yourself and talk about it. How have you stepped up in this
>moment? What more would you like to be able to do? How are you
>educating yourself?
>
>I'm really interested in what y'all have to say on this here
>majority Black message board...