Let me introduce you to Ashleigh Shackelford. Better yet, why don’t we let Ashleigh introduce herself! According to her website, “Ashleigh Shackelford is a queer, nonbinary Black fat femme writer, cultural producer, and artist… she created an organization for body positivity… and a coalition for afrofuturism…” Just your typical girl next door.
Best of all, Ashleigh runs training seminars to help educate others too! The excerpt below comes from one of Ashleigh’s training sessions and gives us a sneak peek into the beauty, the wisdom, the insight that is Ashleigh Shackelford.
All white people are racist. So, I put this up because I really want any white person in the room to know up front that this is what we’re dealing with. That it’s not going to be this coddling of white tears and what that looks like. We’re not going to discuss, “Oh, maybe some of us have worked it out.” No, you’re always going to be a racist actually.
So even when you’re on your path to trying to figure out how to be a better human being — because I believe that white people are born into not being human. Like that, actually, instead of people of color and black folks being dehumanized, that, actually, everyone is dehumanized… within white supremacy. That y’all are born into a life to not be human, and that’s what y’all are taught to do, to be demons. So, in this particular way, white people are all racist, so I just want y’all to know that up front.