racismschool:

During the upcoming Black History Month, this will be yet another question asked. So, let’s answer it now.

First, I’d like to address the reason it was started in the first place. This is going to be a shocker so prepare yourselves…Black people (or any PoC for that matter) were not being represented on television.

leonineantiheroine:

Relevant to Australia and also online spaces, and thanks abagond!!! xx

“White women’s tears is one of the main ways White American women have of derailing any talk of racism, particularly their own racism. It is part of a more general pattern of white people making their feelings matter more than the truth – something you see too in the tone argument, for example.

White women’s tears can come about in different ways, but here is the classic scene:

1. A white woman says something racist.
2. A black woman points it out. (It could be any person of colour but it works best against black women for reasons given below.)
3. The white woman says she is not racist and starts crying.
4. For added effect the white woman can run out of the room.
5. Other whites, particularly white men, come to the aid and comfort not of the wronged black woman but of the racist white woman!
6. The black woman, the wronged party, is made to seem like the mean one in the eyes of whites.
7. The white woman continues to believe she is not racist.

Tables turned! It works so well that it is hard not to see the tears as a cheap trick.

This is more than just a woman using tears to get her way. It is built on a set of White American ideas about race, listed here in no particular order:

• It works best when these two stereotypes can be applied:
  • The Sapphire stereotype - black women as mean, angry and disagreeable
  • The Pure White Woman stereotype - white women as these special, delicate creatures who need to be protected at all costs. It is what drives the Missing White Woman Syndrome – and, in the old days, lynchings.
• The r-word: to be called a “racist”, however gently and indirectly, is a terrible, upsetting thing for white people – far worse than, you know,being a racist.
• White people and their feelings are the centre of the known universe.
• Hearts of stone: meanwhile whites seem to have a very, very hard time putting themselves in the shoes of people of colour.
• Moral blindness: white people think they are Basically Good, therefore if someone points out something bad about them it must be out of hatred.
• White solidarity: whites are afraid to stand up against racism, particularly when they are with other whites. Also, they do not like it when you call other whites racists – they seem to take it personally for some reason.

All these things work together to help create the scene laid out above. It is why it works best for young, good-looking white women and why black women’s tears have nowhere the same effect in a white setting.”

generalbriefing:

munstermum:

I feel that in our society, it is only allowed that African Americans can be victimized by racism.

ANYONE can be a victim of racism.

I hate seeing this white privilege shit, because where I live, thats just a shitty excuse for not taking responsibility for yourself.

I will say…

Munstermum, I’m sorry you had a bad experience.  I myself have a shitty story or two.  When I was in kindergarten we moved into a house in a majority white neighborhood. I had a couple of friends in the neighborhood (white) and we would play together.  Once, when I was 10, one of my white friend took me to the home of another little girl down the street to introduce me so we could all play together.  When we knocked on the door, her mother looked at me and said “I’m sorry. I don’t allow my daughter to play with blacks and I don’t let blacks in my home.” My friend went in anyway and left me outside.  I was shocked at both of them and I went home and cried. I was ashamed and never told my parents. It was the first time I felt persecuted for the color of my skin and unfortunately, my first taste of racism in my neighborhood. It wasn’t the last.

When I was in the 5th grade, a teacher accused me of stealing money from the 5th grade bookstore. I had accounted for all of the money I was originally given when the store opened and I gate receipts for all the sales made. The amount missing was not found on my person or in any of my belongings and I had not had any contact with other students. I was the only black student in the class. Turned out the teacher miscounted to till. A similar incident had happened to my little sister with a white male teacher who taught her 2nd grade class two years before. He accused her of stealing his wallet. He had dropped it in the teacher’s lounge.  Neither of us stole a dime. Neither of us received apologies from our accusers. I still wasn’t allowed to work the bookstore for the rest of the year.

When I was a freshman in high school, I awoke to my father running into the house and telling my mother to call the police.  He wouldn’t let my sister or I near the window, but he couldn’t stop us from seeing.  Sometime during the night, someone had broken into one of the cars and rolled it down the driveway and into the tree across the street.  They then spray painted “Nigger” across our driveway and on our mailbox in big, red paint.  

When I graduated high school, I applied for and received a Regents Scholarship to the University to which I had been accepted. I had graduated from my high school with honors and I received a full scholarship into college covering tuition and board. I also received several smaller scholarships that helped me pay for my books. I slipped up and told a fellow white student about the scholarship one day in the course of a conversation and she claimed I hadn’t earned the scholarship but rather I was a a beneficiary of pure affirmative action. That’s also how she claimed I got in the school.  It was beyond her to believe I had worked for both. I never told another person about the scholarships and I again graduated with honors.

These are just a few of my experiences.  I’m not telling you this to belittle your experience or to gain your sympathy. I’m telling you this so you understand something. You see racism is not something that occurs to you one time.  It’s something you live with on a daily basis- for life, regardless of where you go.  That you can point to an experience that happened to you “this one time, at band camp” is not going to change the fact that racism is not a white experience.  

I’m sorry that happened to you. But it does not compare to the experience of POCs.  That was an experience, with asshole people, just a few.  My experience is systematic.  These people treated me this way because society told them that was just fine. Because our nation has continually perpetuated the notion that those who are not white are less than. And because of a long history of negative treatment toward POCs- blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, and Muslims.

When you have presidential candidates taking turns throwing your race under the bus to gain the support of the white electorate, we can talk.  When you have Christian groups writing to force companies to pull support for television programs that promote understanding of your culture AND THEY BEND TO THE PRESSURE, we can talk.  When you are pulled over and asked for proof of citizenship, we can talk. What you experienced was assholery, not racism. Racism is systematic. That was just a bunch of dicks.

sapphrikah:

Of being able to go the the movies and see full, 2 and a half hour features of nothing but white people. (Not to mention if someone makes a movie with a good amount of black people, suddenly its a niche film just for blacks, but white movies are for all, ya’ll!)

Its like we…

thegoddamazon:

Africans had slaves, but as part of a workforce. Most if not all slaves were prisoners of war, and even then, the slaves assimilated to the tribe in which they were held, and had a chance to marry and have children and earn a place among the tribe given a chance. Also, in…

super-eklectic1:

i need you to read this:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

and these:

http://super-eklectic1.tumblr.com/post/11807662655/anedumacation-weexist-weresist-as

…

thisshitisallracist:

downlo:

This chart reveals that the overwhelming majority of acting gigs (67%) are meant for White people:

This one shows how the overwhelming majority of lead roles (81.9%) are played by White actors:

And this one shows that most lead roles (73%) are filled by male actors:

Just to show I’m not making this up. 

feedmerevolution:

Fact: Black youths arrested for drug possession are 48 times more likely to wind up in prison than white youths arrested for the same crime under the same circumstances.

Source: “Young White Offenders get lighter treatment,” 2000. The Tennessean. April 26: 8A.

Fact: Black and Latino men are three times more likely than white men to be stopped by the police and have their cars searched – even though white men are four times more likely to have weapons or drugs.

Source: Matthew R. Durose, Erica L. Schmitt and Patrick A. Langan, Contacts Between Police and the Public: Findings from the 2002 National Survey. U.S. Department of Justice, (Bureau of Justice Statistics), April 2005.

Fact: White men with a criminal record are more likely to be called back for a job interview than black men with no record, even when their education and experience are the same.

Source: Pager, Devah. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology. Volume 108: 5, March: 937-75.

Fact: Students of colour are far less likely to be put in honours courses even after you take test scores and grades into account.

Source: Gordon, Rebecca. 1998. Education and Race. Oakland: Applied Research Center: 48-9; Fischer, Claude S. et al., 1996. Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 163; Steinhorn, Leonard and Barabara Diggs-Brown, 1999. By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race. NY: Dutton: 95-6.

Fact: Students of colour are more than twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school even though they are not much more likely to break school rules than whites.

Source: Skiba, Russell J. et al., The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment. Indiana Education Policy Center, Policy Research Report SRS1, June 2000; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System: Youth 2003, Online Comprehensive Results, 2004.

This is a little hard to explain, but I’ll try. This graphic reminds me of America. We notice the black box. We notice the red box. But we don’t exactly notice the white box as much as we notice the absence of color. This is because the background is white - AKA, white is the majority. In this space, white is seen as normal. It doesn’t offend the senses. The other colors stick out, however, because they are not natural to this space. They are the minority. For me, this is the foundation of the theory of whiteness in America.