I got an e-mail last night that got me thinking. It was from someone who’d taken exception to the language I used in my latest “Dear White People…” post. At issue were many interrelated things, but one primary concern expressed to me was my choice of the pronoun “you” when I spoke to and about white people. One point brought home to me was that at least this person in specific felt like those “you” pronouns were calling em out to speak on behalf of all white people.
I want to say a little bit about both language and rhetoric in my essays as well as my feelings about my allies, and finally touch a little on tokenizing and being tokenized (i.e. being called upon to speak for a group either in a formal or an informal capacity).