Expecting the oppressed to educate the oppressor drains their energy

Evidence

Non-Whites, women, and LGBTs were “expected to educate” Whites, men, and heterosexuals to appreciate “our humanity,” Lorde said in one of her most famous speeches. “The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1051

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Lorde names a structural trap — the education burden placed on the oppressed — that reframes well-meaning allyship as itself a cost imposed on the marginalized; dense enough to sit with and argue about.
• XREF: Pairs with the reader’s discomfort theme: this is an early expression of ‘the oppressed must explain themselves to the oppressor,’ resonant with modern emotional-labor critiques of performative allyship.