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.