White Trans Women, Stop Being Racist
a letter from a Black trans woman
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People talk all the time about T4T like it’s a kind of shelter, like the letters themselves are supposed to filter this out. Black trans women have been saying for years that they don’t. T4T just makes it quieter, and harder to name without everything falling apart.
So many of us have already tried to tell you this, and every time, the response moves away from what we’re saying and onto how we said it. Too harsh, or too angry, or just too much. There’s always a reason to not hear it.
So I’m trying something I probably shouldn’t. I’m trying to say it in a way you won’t immediately reject.
Every other Black trans woman I know has told me this is a bad idea and a waste of my time. They’re probably right. I’m gonna try anyway, because I don’t know how to keep saying this in a way that doesn’t turn into a script you recognize and then ignore. Please don’t disappoint me.
I’m tired. I mean the kind of tired where you walk into a party and already know how the night is going to go: the hug at the door, the smiles, the girl every other sentence, the shared language that sounds like closeness. Then something changes, because I said one thing too directly or didn’t shrink the way you expected, and I can feel the distance arrive and the edge come into your voice. You don’t have to say anything. I’ve learned how to read it anyway.
A lot of you believe you’re good, and I don’t think you wake up trying to be racist. It’s quieter than that. You take from us, the language, the cadence, the jokes, the way we move, and you quote Black women like it settles something. You build parts of your womanhood through us. Then, when it’s time to actually stand next to us, when it costs you something, you disappear, or you go neutral, or you get so careful that careful becomes its own exit.
I’m still there, still expected to be patient, to explain, to say it in a tone that won’t make you shut down, as if saying it wrong would make the problem me instead of the thing I’m pointing towards.
It shows up in who gets defended and who gets dropped, who gets to be complicated and who gets called a problem, and who gets labeled aggressive the second her voice isn’t soft. You know this pattern. That’s what makes this so frustrating.
Being trans doesn’t cancel out being white, and it doesn’t undo what you learned or what you benefit from. What it gives you is the knowledge of what being hurt feels like, and somehow even that isn’t translating into how you treat us.
Another reading list won’t do it, and neither will a mutual aid fund that fails the one girl it was supposedly for, and neither will crying in front of me.
I need you to act differently when it matters. When another white trans woman says something sideways, say something back. When a Black trans woman gets pushed out, notice, and don’t just let it happen. The moment it gets inconvenient, the moment it makes the night tense and risks your place with the other girls, that’s exactly when it counts.
Nobody is grading you on perfection. Stop pretending this isn’t happening, and stop making us carry the entire weight of naming it.
If you’re going to call me your sister, then act like it means something.
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