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cw: white person's take on racism and race relations

you're right that complaints about anti-white racism are usually just racists making noise, and also that systemic racism against whites doesn't really exist because the social power dynamic in place favors white people. a white person still however might experience interpersonal racism, and while this too needs to be examined and understood in the context of the prevailing white-preferential power dynamic, it isn't not racism just because it's not institutional.

i want to be explicit and clear that i am not attempting to equate the odd moment of relatively tame discrimination experienced here and there by the average white person to the adversity experienced by non-white people every fucking day of their lives without cessation.

rather i'm just very dissatisfied with the notion that aggression against someone based on their racial characteristics somehow ever isn't racism. worse, the implication that there must be a systemic element present for something to be "racism" leads to the conclusion that a black man who virulently hates latinos cannot be a racist, because black people do not have institutional power over latinos - which is very obviously nonsense.

as near as i can tell this idea derives from the old slogan "racism equals prejudice plus power" which is fine as shorthand for the idea that institutional racism, like, fucking exists, but lately seems to have been reduced to a kind of thought-terminating cliche that gets hauled out and spat in peoples faces as a "fuck you anyway" in lieu of seizing on a teachable moment.

which of these would you respond better to? "abuse against you doesn't count because of your inherent unchangeable physical characteristics", or "yeah that really sucks that that happened to you, feels shitty doesn't it? now imagine that's your entire life everywhere you go." one is just going to make a person harden up and double down. the other might actually get someone thinking about shit, and that's how we win, by invoking empathy in hearts and minds instead of making everything into adversarial bullshit when it doesn't need to be.

it's inaccurate, adds to the noise, sows division, and does less than nothing to change anyone's mind.

that said op meme is hilarious and dude needs to chill tf out. also that podcast is really good.