by Kacey Y » Mon Feb 05, 2018 4:24 pm
The truth is, America has a clear and rock solid priority when it comes to racial issues. White people feeling safe and comfortable is #1. Anyone is free to bring up their complaints and concerns about racial issues, as long as it's not in a time, place, manner or context that makes white people feel unsafe ("feel", not BE) or uncomfortable (emotionally or morally). Which is to say...never. The only right place is in a book or a movie written by white people or a speech given by a person of color decades ago (but only certain ones that makes us feel hopeful about the future). The only right time is not now, usually some hypothetically time later when everyone has calmed down. The other right time is in the past, when we can admit we were wrong. Even though lots of people felt what they were doing was right at the time, we know we were horribly wrong in the past, but right now everything is fine and we see clearly and it's just the angry person of color that's overreacting and being unreasonable. Even though in another 30 years we will look back at THIS time and cluck our tongues about how backward and wrong we were and how it's so clear, but NOW....
So yeah...it's ok if it's the movie Crash or a very special episode of a tv show where everyone learns a valuable lesson or a speech from civil rights leader from decades ago (only the ones that make us feel hopeful about the "the future", which is NOW, everything is better now). Most often the takeaway is that all racism is the result of backwards ideas or actions by individuals who are either being knowingly bad or are just ignorant and need to be taught. It's never cultural, legal and governmental systems. It's never people finding a great reason to do something that silences the voices of people of color or alienates them. So when the system alienates and silences people of color, it's always ok, as long as the people moving the gears don't feel they were being purposefully evil and racist or willfully ignorant. Meaning they didn't say the "n word" or talk with a condescending southern drawl or claim they were genetically superior to anyone. Everything else is fine, as long as we can find a way to justify it as an issue of safety and comfort.
Not that I think about this stuff all the time and it eats away at me from the inside or anything.
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