TikToker Says Black Separatism Won’t Work Because White People Won’t ‘Leave Black or Brown People Alone’

A white TikTok creator is wading into a hot button debate over race.

Kylie Brewer posted a video to her TikTok on Saturday, August 22, explaining why she believes “Black Separatism” — the idea that Black and brown communities would be better off permanently separated from white communities — “would never work.”

Brewer describes herself on the platform as “Raised MAGA. Raging leftist,” and lists feminism, LGBTQ+ advocacy and antiracism in her bio, which also notes that she attended Brown and the University of Pennsylvania and later moved to New York City.

“There’s a movement called Black Separatism and I’ve had a lot of people comment [on] this as well, but basically saying we should have stayed separate,” Brewer said in the video. “And while I don’t blame people for thinking this because of all the pain and the hatred that white people have caused, there are three main reasons this would never work.”

Brewer broke her argument into three points: that white people, in her words, “don’t know how to leave black or brown people alone, ever”; that there’s historical precedent for thriving Black communities being destroyed by white violence; and that the ultimate goal should be mutual understanding rather than division. “The main thing that we need to all work towards is an understanding of each other and seeing differences as something to be celebrated, not as something to be erased,” she said in the social media post, adding, “That is why I’m very antiassimilation.”

The comment section quickly became a debate of its own, with several users agreeing with Brewer’s argument that separation would not prevent white people from interfering in Black communities.

“The fact that so many people hate you and are sending you death threats just shows that you’re telling the truth, they’re really exposing themselves,” one user wrote. Another echoed Brewer’s first point, writing, “I was just thinking about this, if black people completely separated themselves white ppl would still come bother us.”

A third pointed to history to support that argument, writing, “Black Wall Street is the perfect example.”

Others pushed back in the comment section on Brewer’s opposition to separation. One argued that segregation could work if Black communities held equal power, writing, “If we were segregated and had equal power, white people could not intimidate us.” A second person also questioned in the comment section why Black communities choosing to separate should be viewed negatively: “Why is this conversation always about black people? … black people having their own communities is somehow where the line is drawn. It’s not fair.”

Still others agreed with Brewer’s conclusion that separatism would fail, but offered their own reasoning in the comment section of her TikTok video. “Segregation also would never work in the long term because having people arbitrarily/legally separated will inevitably lead to conflict,” one commenter wrote. Another similarly argued that the question of who controls that separation matters, writing, “Black separatism will never work when black people aren’t the ones drawing the lines. It would be a modern day apartheid.”