But I'm A Cat Person

I spent a lot of time during high school/college in communities where a prevailing sentiment was “to be a good white ally, you should support and agree with the One Right Opinion that is shared by all people of color.”

If you knew of a POC who didn’t agree with the One Right Opinion? Well, that was just a way to rationalize your racism, and pretty sus — seems like maybe you made this whole person up in the first place.

If you’d heard multiple conflicting takes and weren’t even sure which was the One Right Opinion, that just proved you hadn’t educated yourself enough.

Conservatives think this is great, because they can just make a Twitter sockpuppet and use a black/woman/trans/etc stock photo as the icon, and it’s like a magic spell that makes all their tweets the One Right Opinion! Isn’t that how it works?

Sparrow, at least, has been on this merry-go-round long enough to know where it’s going (even if she has every reason to believe Cybele is a real black human being) and not buy in.

Cybele: Are you here for the debate? Which candidate are you supporting?

Sparrow: Dana Wells, obviously. Bennett is terrible.

Cybele: Oh? Why’s that?

Sparrow: Where to start? He hates poor people. He thinks it makes sense to spend billions defending the country from terrorists and Beings but no money defending from cancer and potholes. He’s sexist, he’s homophobic, he’s racist —

And he —

Cybele: I don’t think he’s racist!

Sparrow: . . . Uh . . .

. . . look, I appreciate that it would be obnoxious of me to argue with you about this, so I’m not gonna try.

[Has tried it before. It didn’t go well.]

Sparrow: But it’s not possible for me to agree with every person of color at once, so I’m going to keep agreeing with the ones who disagree with you, okay? Okay.

Cybele: If you want!

[Is not an actual black person.]

Cybele (thinking): Weird . . . the boss said it’d stump liberals if I said that when I looked like this. Maybe she’s not a “liberal”?