Nerdy By Nature
I need to stop telling people I’m going to go out with them and then flake on them. I just hate being mean, but I guess this isn’t exactly nice…
Let’s start out simple with this post.
Haven’t we all heard it before?
-“I got bullied in school for being white. You can’t tell me that’s not racist!” No, this is called you being picked on by a mean child.
-“Someone called me cracker!” This is someone calling you by your privilege.
-“People can be racist against white people too.”
No, they cannot. There is an inherent logical fallacy in your argument that will never make it true. However, white people can be discrimated against. Discrimination is different from racism.
Let’s start from the beginning. Your first step is to accept that “a hatred or intolerance of another race” is not the definition of racism. The dictionary is wrong. Get over it.
Racism is when intolerance in government laws, attitudes and ideals of a society are ingrained in a culture to the point where patterns of discrimination towards a certain race are institutionalized as normal. If you keep this in mind, you’ll understand that reverse racism doesn’t- and can’t- exist.
There is another saying “Racism (or sexism) = prejudice + power. POC (people of color) can be prejudiced against white people. But they can never have power, i.e. a whole system of structured support that backs them. White people often don’t understand how much power they have. Just ONE white person has more power to do actual harm to a black person than one hundred black people do to that white person. A white person can KILL a black person without any consequences, while if the situation was reversed you can bet the killer wouldn’t see the outside of a prison cell for a long, long time.
When white people complain about reverse racism, they are not complaining about losing their RIGHTS. What they are complaining about is losing their PRIVILEGE.
White people can never call someone else racist against them because that ‘someone else’ does not have the power to OPPRESS them. The person has the power to be mean.To hurt feelings.But not to OPPRESS.
THAT is the key difference. When a POC is mean to you, they are JUST being mean to you. Their entire society is not ACTIVELY discriminating against and oppressing you. Their society is not one where it is difficult for them to not be racist against you.
But yours is. And you need to accept that.
Um.
(via thedirtyvirgin)
