white people are racist by default (in the united states as well as other countries). are you white? congrats, you’re racist, and here’s the explanation:
you grew up in a racist society -> you were socialized to be racist thanks to racism being a dominant ideology -> you benefit from racism -> you’re racist no matter how much u think you’re not.
unlearning it is going to be a constant battle and u will never unlearn it fully. accept this. it is ingrained in you as a result of your upbringing and the media you’ve consumed. the sooner you come to terms with your own racism, the sooner u can better yourself. recognize the problem in yourself instead of setting yourself apart from those “other” white people.
I fux heavy with the White people who keep putting this post on my dash
This applies to all social structures by the way.
You’re a man? You grew up benefitting from sexism. You’re straight? You grew up with homophobic ideals. You’re cis? You grew up with transphobic ideals. You’re able bodied? You grew up with ableist tendencies.
The process of unlearning all of the ideology you were surrounded by is what activism is about. Do it.
And even if you’re not privileged under a given social structure, you might still have a lot of internalized things to unlearn
Our society teaches us to hate the oppressed, if an oppressed person says that what you believe or do is harmful and they tell you – don’t get offended, learn and do better
The important thing here is, nobody’s blaming you (the general “you”) for this. I think a big part of the reason people get so offended when they hear these attitudes is because it sounds like “you’re a horrible person and support these things”. That’s not what it means, and that’s not what you are.
But society feeds us a steady diet of memetic poison almost from the day we’re born, and for each blend of poison there are groups who are more or less immune, groups who are harmed in ways they don’t really notice and groups who suffer horribly from it. It’s not your fault that you’ve been fed poison, and nobody is blaming you for having been fed poison.
It’s just… the poison is there, and because you’ve been fed so much of it, it’s in your bloodstream and your lips and your head. And you might not notice it’s there if it’s not harming you or visibly harming others around you, and spread it without realising that’s what you’re doing.
That’s why it’s so important to recognise and identify harmful ideologies for what they are and learn about the harm they do, so you can start checking your first reaction and changing the ways you’ve been taught to act and think.
I just thought about this today and dug through my pictures to find it: a letter from a black soldier in the Civil War to the person who owns his daughter. “The longer you keep my child from me the longer you will have to burn in Hell and the quicker you will get there.“
photo text (with corrected spelling and broken into sentences, paragraphs):
Letter from a Black Soldier to the Owner of His Daughter
Spotswood Ric, a former slave, writes to Kittey Diggs, 1864:
I received a letter from Cariline telling me that you say I tried to steal, to plunder, my child away from you. Not I want you to understand that Mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my own.
And you may hold on to her as long as you can. But I want you to remember this one thing, that the longer you keep my Child from me the longer you will have to burn in hell and the quicker you’ll get there.
For we are now making up about one thousand black troops to come up thorough, and want to come through, Glasgow. And when we come woe be to Copperhood rebels and to the Slaveholding rebels. For we don’t expect to leave them there. Root nor branch. But we think however that we (that have children in the hands of you devils), we will try your the day that we enter Glasgow.
I want you to understand Kittey Diggs that where ever you and I meet we are enemies to each other. I offered once to pay you forty dollars for my own Child but I am glad now that you did not accept it. Just hold on now as long as you can and the worse it will be for you.
You never in you life before I came down hear did you give children anything, not anything whatever, not even a dollars worth of expenses. Now you call my children your property. Not so with me.
My children is my own and I expect to get them. And when I get ready to come after Mary I will have both a power and authority to bring her away and to exact vengeances on them that holds my Child.
You will then know how to talk to me. I will assure that. And you will know how to talk right too. I want you now to just hold on; to hear if you want to. If your conscience tells that’s the road, go that road and what it will bring you to Kittey Diggs.
I have no fears about getting Mary out of your hands. This whole Government gives cheer to me and you cannot help yourself.
Source: Ira Berlin, ed. Freedom, A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982, 690.
I wanted to find out what happened (DID HE GET HIS DAUGHTER BACK?) and the answer is that not only was he reunited with his family, but went on to be a successful minister and his daughter was interviewed in the 30s for the Slave Narratives Project.
A gentle reminder that the “last lynchings” were between 1981-1991, so
it’s less than 40. The CRA act was passed 54 years ago. Not enough
people want to hear or remember that.
y’all should remember that lynching is the extralegal murder for an alleged offense without a legal trial. Of course these cases of people dying at the hands of police is a lynching.
I didn’t know Mr. T pityed fool’s that weren’t woke, but that’s awesome. #respect
“I think about my father being called ‘boy’, my uncle being called ‘boy’, my brother, coming back from Vietnam and being called ‘boy’. So I questioned myself:“What does a black man have to do before he’s given the respect as a man?” So when I was 18 years old, when I was old enough to fight and die for my country, old enough to drink, old enough to vote, I said I was old enough to be called a man. I self-ordained myself Mr. T so the first word out of everybody’s mouth is “Mr.” That’s a sign of respect that my father didn’t get, that my brother didn’t get, that my mother didn’t get.“
It won’t get better for LGBT youth of color until we identify and dismantle the ways we’ve normalized racism. Gabe hits it on the head:
I want all my white mutuals to watch this immediately! And I’ll reblog this everyday until you guys fully understand.
I recently left a local kink group in my city because the members and most admins think it’s okay to state “racial preferences” on dating apps. Anything remotely resembling “No blacks or asians, just my preference.” Is an affirmative statement of aversion based on someone’s race. You are saying you are not open to the possibility of attraction either on a superficial or emotional level based on skin color, both of which are racist.
“Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as woman or person of color as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling.” – Kimberlé Crenshaw (pictured above), Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color
She is the originator of the term “intersectionality” to describe what Black women have lived, known and experienced for centuries. It describes what Sojourner Truth spoke in 1851. It is not just a word, not a meme and even more than a concept. When it’s disregarded, so are Black women and other marginalized women of colour, globally. And before people come to critique the word, the concept, the epistemology, the experiences and the lives of Black women, it would behoove them to actually know what it is they are talking about versus trying to plagiarize, colonize or erase Black women’s work. And though the intersections of race/gender/class/sexual orientation aren’t the only ones articulated, this is its origin.
Give black feminists the credit we deserve, this woman is revolutionary.
“are you really going to tear a friendship apart over different opinions??”
listen, I got tons of friends who like pineapple on their pizza, but once you reach that “you, your community, or other marginalized communities don’t deserve basic human rights or even perhaps the right to live” level, you should just accept that it’s your fault no one wants to be your friend.
More accurately, no one really breaks up friendships (or families) over differences of “opinion”, but they will do so over differences of fundamental issues of morality.
The fact that large numbers of people think that “moral positions, often about issues that are literally life and death” and “personal opinions” are interchangeable concepts is a large part of what’s wrong with society.
You know what I like, and feel is so important? That he doesn’t say “Men thinks those are THEIR positions”. He says “We think those are OUR positions.”
As a male feminist, he still doesn’t exclude himself from the group of men.
shealwaysreads 