Racism. It is everywhere. I don't want to get into too much detail about the crap I've been seeing on my Facebook feed, but a couple of things need to be said:
White males ages 18-45: it is not a hard-knock life for you. Get over it.*
Other white people, even (especially?) other mixed-race folk with passing privilege, or those of you in interracial relationships: racism exists. If a person of colour points out that they have experienced racism, details slurs that have been used against them, states that there is a possibility of other people of colour/mixed race people experiencing the same thing, wants to discuss ways to prevent or work through these problems-that does not make them racist. Saying "I have been called/some people of my race get called/this particular person of this race in this scenario may be called (insert rude name here)" does not equate to calling said specific or hypothetical person that name. If a person of colour responds to your assertions that you have never seen or participated in such behaviour by pointing out that you are white (or at least appear to be so) and therefore have a different experience than they do on a pretty major scale, do not just keep yelling. Listen. Educate yourself in regard to your privilege. Grow up.
*Speaking in broad generalisations here. I know individual white men don't necessarily have an easy time of things. I'm just saying that in terms of large scale or systematic oppressions, this demographic doesn't really "get it."
2 comments:
Do you think that a "person of color" is any person that isn't white (or light beige)?
On another note: it seems that you basically encourage rational and informed arguments void of screaming, so why are you only requesting this from debates about race? Why not just write a blog entry asking everyone to have proper discussions?
On a third note: You didn't write this piece in a constructive manner at all which you probably could have done since you're white yourself and should understand white culture. "Listen" and "grow up" is good advice for anyone, but it's not enough just putting those phrases in there. The format of your blog entry was "In this situation: do this" when it should have been "Because of this (something particular to white people), do this in this situation". What you wrote just won't lessen the problem of racism.
If you just needed to vent that's something else and no problem of mine.
Oh, and I forgot to make Blogger notify me if there was and action in this blog entry, so I'm doing that with this comment.
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