Black Lives Matter
This–> “Supporting Black Lives Matter doesn’t make you liberal. It makes you human. Supporting a vulnerable population should have no political affiliation.” @anxiouslymoming
I’ve read comments, on social media, from folks who are not people of color. And they say that they have experienced racism too. They haven’t. Everyone can experience prejudice though. Everyone.
What many people are doing is confusing prejudice with racism. That’s easy to do, because racism starts with prejudice. BUT it turns into racism when you add “power.”
Here are definitions of the two words:
Prejudice: an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics.
Racism: the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another
So racism is prejudice + power. That’s why even though everyone can experience prejudice…it’s BIPOC who experience racism.
Scott Woods wrote a powerful post on this, which I’m sharing below, and you can read more of his writing HERE.
“The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not.
Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.
Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on.
So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into.
It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world.
It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.”
As for white privilege- that doesn’t mean that a white person has not or cannot experience hardship and trauma. Sadly everyone can and has suffered. What white privilege means is that their color, their being white isn’t at the root, or the cause of what happened/happens to them.
