Actually, no, that’s not the definition of racism, very or otherwise. Racism requires privilege, specifically institutional privilege. In the United States, and here in Portland, the apparatus of institutional privilege is white supremacy. There are plenty of bigots in this country, of all shapes and sizes. Only one class- whites, has the power to impose biases on other classes. That is racism.
No, it’s not simple really. The gains whites have made over the past five centuries at the expense of others via colonialism/imperialism are the foundation of the disparity in the first place. Whether or not you feel you personally contribute to white supremacy doesn’t make a damned bit of difference (hint, you are currently putting yourself in service of it.) You simply can not untangle the wealth of the west from the centuries past. What I do not understand is how whites believe they can fleece the world over an epoch of mass armed conflict, slavery, and extraction and not be asked to pay that back, even according to our own lofty ideals of justice…
Any white person’s place in this world is built upon that foundation. This includes myself. Completely untangling the wealth and power we’ve justly earned from that we’ve stolen through global domination is a long and complicated problem. The place to start is within yourself, which is not all that difficult to find.
What disappoints me most is that in the year 2017 Donald Fucking Trump is our goddamned president seriously wtf and we still have to talk about this shit. All the techno wizardy in the world, the so-called gifts of the white man to the world, well la di da. Why do westerners even bother with philosophy besides ur-fascist irrational nonsense? We don’t apply it to anyone else but us whiteys. FFS. We’re the most reactionary humans on the damn planet, and this and the companion thread is chock full of it. Funny, this is pretty much exactly the same sentiment that @Missy_Pants made in the gendered objectification thread re: male response to women/feminism. Reactionary and defensive.
Awww, so concern for the poor white people. You’re blatantly ignoring the real purpose of the doc in the first place- to highlight restaurants owned by people of color so that they might actually enjoy some of the economic benefits of their own cultural production. Ya know, to keep the people of color you’re so obviously unconcerned about from losing their livelihoods.
I wish I had more time to engage on this than I do at the moment. One of the things I’ve taken away from the various people of color that I’ve been reading, listening to, watching, listening is that I need to confront basic white people shit more often. Because I do not have time to write more, I’ll leave a collection of links that I’ve compiled in addition to the recommendations made by the authors of the google doc.
bell hooks- Eating the Other
Essay by Ijeoma Olua on cultural appropriation
Comic by Shing Yin Khor
Essay by Soliel Ho
Note on Commercial Theatre by Langston Hughes
You’ve taken my blues and gone
You sing 'em on Broadway
And you sing 'em in Hollywood Bowl,
And you mixed 'em up with symphonies
And you fixed 'em
So they don’t sound like me.
Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.
You also took my spirituals and gone.
You put me in Macbeth and Carmen Jones
And all kinds of Swing Mikados
And in everything but what’s about me
But someday somebody’ll
Stand up and talk about me,
And write about me
Black and beautiful
And sing about me,
And put on plays about me!
I reckon it’ll be
Me myself!
Yes, it’ll be me.
