“It is white America who invited them in, and it is white America who has the responsibility to see them out.”

Said by Black Lives Matter Nashville, in a statement about why the group decided not to participate in counter-protests to respond to White Lives Matter Counter Protests.

Not only does the action of taking part in counter protests distract from the “destructive ways systematic white supremacy rallies against the lives of black and brown folks in Middle Tennessee and this country every day,” but groups like black lives matter urge that just it isn’t their job to.

And it isn’t.

This is a sentiment I have heard plead by many African Americans, especially in the wake of Trump’s election of 2016. The notion that confronting racism, calling it out, advocating for “its end” should not be the job of the marginalized group.  The words “Allyship isn’t enough” seem to echo.

With their statement, BLM Nashville asks for their well-meaning, antiracist allies to renounce from their comfortable distance.  BLM takes pride in expressing themselves, themselves, but when it comes to the distracting, derailing, and often dangerous counterparts of racist White Lives Matter groups, it is up to the species of its same kind to prod them away, and potentially keep black lives safe and existing from the menace of this anti-black supremacy response.

Many white activists I see on social media and in opinion editorial writing take acceptance in this grant issued by black activists.  They hastily oblige– though with caution and questions to follow.  They don’t want to say too much.  They don’t want to say to little.  Most of all, they don’t know what to say.  But how Collier Meyerson, a black contributor to the opinion website Splinter News puts it, that is more in the right direction than nothing at all.  Because, “there’s no clear path or prescription for how white allies should operate in a movement led by black and brown people—that’s part of the work.”

Part of the work.  The same work BLM Nashville mentions needing, when attempting to juggle their own issues of injustice, toppled over by the counter protesting of White/All Lives Matter groups. The work of responsibility, accountability, the work of sacrificing comfort.  The work of asking less questions, and taking more cues. The work of taking orders, but not relying on them for more. The work of stepping into the unknown, the work of attempting to move in the right direction.  Meyerson says, “It’s not the usual order of things, but it’s the way forward.”

This spoke to me, the idea of this not being the usual order of things. There isn’t a right way yet, but there are surely a lot of wrong ones, and that is the duty of the white ally.  To be in limbo, to dodge the errors of their contemporaries and be better than their predecessors.  This “not the usual order of things,”–this uncertainty–reminds me that we’re in the wake of something new. This isn’t how activism has always been.  That something new actually evokes excitement to me. Lowercase excitement.

So, I’d say, that this is the call to end perfunctory activism.