"But people can be racist against white people too!"
I have heard that enough times, and I am so tired of it. Are enough of us seriously so self-absorbed that we cannot think of others' struggles instead of our own?
Read this carefully:
We do not suffer marginalization or oppression as a result of our skin. We benefit heavily and regularly from a system of power and privilege.
Guess where we stand in that system.
The worst that will happen to us is that people will assume we are racist -- and it does not help to get angry at this. In trying to prove how great of a person you are and how much of a racist you are not, you should not have to whine about a generalization that is understandable.
Get a grip. We will never not be hired because of our race. No one will ever walk by us on the street and clutch their bag because they think we are going to steal it. No one will ever doubt us when we tell them we were born here. We have better chances of living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. We will be protected immediately by law enforcement. We have a lesser chance of being incarcerated or arrested. We will be validated if we throw a tantrum and try to "reclaim land." We will most likely not be stopped on a street if we are holding a gun.
Don't believe me? Look at this article.
This article is a massive list that provides real statistics from recent years in really putting our privilege into perspective. I get it. You don't like being called a racist. Fine, but if you really wanted to prove that you aren't one -- stop whining about "reverse racism" -- it doesn't exist.
What you are thinking of is prejudice, which occurs on an individual basis. It is virtually impossible that we could be discriminated against on an institutional scale because we are the people in power in that hierarchy. Look at our government -- what kind of people are the majority in Congress? White people.
Sure, you can come from a low-income family or you could be a woman -- but that will not affect how we are treated based on our race, which, by the way, is a man-made construct created to establish this hierarchy of power that I'm referring to.
Race is something that changes over time, space, and culture. When European immigrants came to America, the Irish, Italians, and Jews were not considered "white." Today, their descendants benefit from the same system of oppression their ancestors suffered from. I am Irish -- I would know this.
I implore you -- read the article. Do yourself and everyone around you a favor and educate yourself. Maybe think about other people too once in a while.
