People thought I was being a T-total ahole when I began doing what the meme states. But after being attacked by a racist magat while traveling for work in 2018, anything racist became like nails on a chalkboard. For you GenZ, like a loud screech, full volume, coming through broken headphones. I began unfriending anyone on my Facebook that espoused racist content of any kind.
In just 4 months, I went from over 2600+ FB friends, all people I knew personally from work and my hobbies, to just over 400. Within another two, I was down to 226. At that point, I left FB for about 6 months completely. Losing all that history stored in the FB servers, just for my own piece of mind.
The ONLY criteria I used was "no racist posts". I posted warnings regularly and not a moving bar. Anything that insulted and demeaned any other "race" was considered racist.
Here's what shocked me most: Only "white" did this. I think that's important to note. No one ever demeaned "white", but then how could they? White men still run most of everything in pretty much every state in the country, for the last 400 years. Hell, even in Alaska, the first indigenous person to be elected to Congress was in 2022. I began to realize even "white" jokes are often considered "universal", while non-white are only "universal" when talking about women. We'll get into this a little more later.
But it began to really change my view. I listened to the people I spent my time off with and how readily a handful would throw around the N word, completely ignored and unchecked by any other "white" in hearing range AND even with their "one black friend" sitting right there. It disgusted me and made me ashamed that I had not noticed it before. I had a side bar with one of the "one black friend" as the expression on his face went unnoticed by everyone else. He wasn't comfortable, but he wasn't going to say anything. They didn't give a shit about his feelings. They were so oblivious to how racist they were they had given their "one black friend" a nickname of a cartoon ape. That's not funny #assholes. It's #racist AF.
Moreover, I've began having candid discussions, privately with minority friends who trusted me enough to tell me what they think, which is often racially based, but it always is in fear of racist "white". They cited verifiable concerns like DWB, rape percentages for Native and Asian American women, excessively higher incarceration rates for black and Hispanic men, and others. The most shocking was the list of black men shot and killed by police in comparison to the "white" for the same or no crimes. Their fears were justified.
Even the least racist "white" consistently ignored their own and others' racist "white" behaviors. Central Park Karen, aka. Amy Cooper, had been a bleeding heart liberal, supposedly anti-racist, until a black man had the "audacity" to ask her "whiteness" to obey the law. How special she was compared to him. How dare he. We all saw the video, fortunately for him, because prior to these powerful little computers in our hands, her actions would've ended up with him in jail or dead, based on her made up accusations. She's not the only one, even newspapers have a bad habit of only showing the pictures of black offenders. Whenever I went to check articles that didn't show the mugshot of the arrested, they were always "white". The insidious assumption they want the readers to make was all offenders just be black.
As people started pointing this racist choice to reduce the "white" faces associated with crime on social media, at first only minorities, the newspapers and news sources ignored the complaints or doubled down, just like Amy Cooper did. Oh yes, she wrote an entire diatribe published by a news magazine where in her fake apology she still blamed her victim. And let's be clear, he was her victim. Had he not had video, that would've been the end of his career, if not his life. That's been the power of the racist bias of the news and racist "white" women all along.
There's a reason racist "white" women are on both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between. There's plenty of sociology, psychology and laymen books that discuss the phenomena. But I'll break all the books I read about it down to one sentence:
A lot of "white" women would rather be a solid "Number 2" to "white" men than blow it up and have to be down in the muck with the other women.
That's it. Racist "white" men elevate them above all minority men and they don't want to lose that at a very subconscious level. That was why a bleeding heart "liberal" like Amy Cooper was cosplaying "white" victim when it suited her.
Do I know how to fix it? Yes and no. It is internal to each of us. You have to begin to recognize it around you, then you have to ask yourself why you have ignored it previously. That's a difficult mirror to look into. Next, you have to make the effort, all the time. It takes work. It takes dedication. It gets easier, but it is a something that requires almost daily affirmations in our current society. Still only you can change you. Someone can drag you to the stream, but they can't force you to drink or bathe. You have to do it for yourself. You have to affirm it in yourself regularly. No one else can do it for you, because we have been groomed into this racist way of thinking from childhood.
Here's the hardest part, coming back full circle to where we started. You'll begin to look at your "white" friends differently. Remember the group of friends who insulted their "one black friend" with that ape nickname? You will never see them in the same way again once you begin this journey. You will see how "group think" made that behavior acceptable, even to you, and you may find out in the rudest way that your friends have limited your ability to see other people equally. You'll see how you were taught it and how the group around you reinforced it. You will have to decide whether they are going to grow with you or you are going to leave them behind.
Then you can tell me, was I being a T-total ahole? Trust me, when you see that nicknaming a black man after any ape is just racist AF, it's a difficult thing to unsee. You may find yourself unfriending a lot of people too.
Anyway, have a wonderful weekend and as usual, #thinkaboutit . #peace .
No comments:
Post a Comment