I Am a Student of the Tim Wise School of Truth Telling, Social Activism and Educating

Tim Wise

There are a whole lot of people I take cues from when it comes to my activism and how my activism is expressed through my writing. Perhaps I will eventually write something on this blog in homage to most or all of the primary people I learn from in this regard. For now however, I wish to point my attention to my teacher, Tim Wise.

I did not always appreciate Tim Wise nor his brand of activism. Don't get me wrong, I always knew his primary subject matter and his understanding and presentation of that subject matter—white privilege, antiracism and such, were always completely spot on. I suppose I just wished he coddled people more, said things more gently and wasn't so in your face with his message.

I am forever grateful I got over that phase.

I am a gentle man. I am a loving man. I am a man who is deeply guided by my spiritual principals and values. It took me a very long time to discover however, that a huge percentage of people on the planet take those wonderful traits—and I do see and experience them as wonderful—as cues to abuse and walk all over people who embody those traits. I have been abused and walked all over by a lot of people as a result.

Enter Tim Wise into my field of consciousness.

I have probably seen Tim Wise give a talk or engage in a small panel discussion about a half a dozen times or so at this point. People in The San Francisco Bay Area, especially in Oakland, love him. Invariably there will be a person in the audience, typically a middle aged white male, who, during the Q and A section of the event, will rise up essentially to refute everything Tim has said in the previous hour or so. Such questioners are usually always foaming at the mouth and filled with a type of rage and vitriol that is easy to sense by the time the person gets the mic in hand. You feel yourself and everyone else in the room bracing for what is coming (which BTW, usually contains a long preamble/race baiting filled commentary before the actual query is arrived at).

I have paid extremely close attention, over the years, to how Tim Wise handles such situations. He combines pit bull tenacity, laser sharp focus, sometimes with a touch of wit and an absolute refusal to be bamboozled or to take on the questioner's rage, which they usually strongly and desperately want him to do. He also completely refuses to allow such people to frame the discourse even though that portion of the discourse started with their question. This, in my opinion, is a singularly amazing skill in interacting with anyone in any confrontational environment. Tim Wise is a master at this specific skill. And I do love learning from a Master.

Tim Wise also speaks the truth that does not want to be acknowledged nor spoken and has the death threats to prove it. When I receive my first death threat I will then know I have truly learned all my lessons from my teacher, Tim Wise. I'm putting my money on my first death threat coming from a white, “A-gay” male member of the LGBT communities. That demographic already has the dubious distinction of owning four of the five times I've been called a nigger to my face in a completely unprovoked, self righteous and sad attempt to demean me in public in my adulthood. The icing on the cake, if that is the appropriate metaphor, is that all four of those incidents occurred in San Francisco, California and not in someplace like Jackson Mississippi nor Selma, Alabama. The fifth incident also occurred in San Francisco. I simply do not know the sexual orientation of the perpetrator who was a bike messenger who sped by me while hurling the epithet.

I digress.

I have also learned that it takes a special breed of person to unflinchingly point out the shortcomings in communities one is also a member of. That is because a special form of disgust and hatred is reserved for all of us who engage in this form of activism. It is only worth it if it is also a community or communities one has a hell of a lot of love and affection for. Tim Wise often points out that both his wife and his two daughters, whom he loves dearly, are all white. When I rail against white privilege in the world and racism within the white, gay male community specifically, I can similarly claim that the man I sleep with every night and have dedicated my life to is also a white man. Okay, a dark olive skinned Sicilian. Sue me.