Cream, do you believe only white people can be racist?
What a loaded question. I’m sure your intentions in asking it are totally genuine. No, I don’t believe that. It’s wrong for anyone to look down on someone solely for their race. And there are plenty of cases of minorities being very racist towards each other, and minorities being racist towards whites. But, the reality of the way race affects society is something that many are afraid to ever think about. They favor some kind of misguided “color blindness.”
As a black person, I’m able to recognize that we have massive problems with toxic masculinity, homophobia, transphobia, not to mention all the huge education and economic problems. I recognized how awful it was when other black kids would say I “act white” as an insult, because of the way I spoke. But I recognize where those things come from and the ways we can work to heal our own community, and I also recognize the many many ways these problems are out of our control and are subject to the whims of a much higher power that doesn’t really seem like they care to actually fix much of anything.
I think this while conversation track, even asking this question, is a big stinking distraction. A deflection. Like what does the answer get us to? Okay, everyone! We all agree every minority can be racist too! So... we still have massive inequality with one race doing a lot better than all the others in literally all aspects of life but at least now we know, it’s bad if a black person says “I hate white people” too.
The timeline basically went like this. I’ll just focus on whites and blacks for ease of argument.
White people: ew distinguished black fellows. We are gonna make you into slaves, strip you of all your culture and family and treat you less than animals.
Black people: please don’t do that.
White people: okay we’re tired of doing that. You’re “free”. You just can’t get a job here or live here or here or here. But if you don’t get a job, you’re going to jail and have to work for us. Also you can’t buy a house, talk to us, look at us funny, eat in the same places as us, or get access to any of the same education and economic benefits we have. Also we’re gonna kill a lot of you just because why not.
Black people: this sucks. Please stop.
White people: no.
Black peoples: okay seriously fucking stop we’re mad now.
White people: oh god these distinguished black fellows are going crazy. Gotta kill a lot more of them. And some of them are talking way too much and making them crazier! Kill them too.
Other white people: hey maybe tone it down white people?
White people: fine. Here civil rights we’re all equal. But actually we’re gonna flood your communities with drugs, sap out all education, put millions of you in jail. The police will always be against you. Some of you can make us a lot of money singing and dancing and throwing balls, you distinguished black fellows are used to that. Also we’re not actually going to pay you back or fix any of the problems the last 300 years war caused we’re just gonna put incredibly tiny Band-Aids over it and pretend we’re all good.
Other white people: okay so there’s still problems but we’re working on it! Economy getting better, technology getting better. Internet! Don’t worry black people we’re working on it! Oh look over there black president!
White people: more war of drugs, more police shootings, here give them more guns. Education still shit? Okay good.
Black people: hey uh, a lot of us are having a lot of problems. We are trying over here but it’s not working much because you guys kind of let the problems get really big and we can’t handle it on our own. Could you please help us?
White people: No.
Other white people: come on guys, we said we’re trying to help, and things are a lot better now! You really need some perspective. You can’t expect other people to solve your problems for you. That’s very entitled.
Black people: okay fine. You won’t help us. So if there still gonna be tons of inequality, could we at least do a small thing and not do all the blackface and racist jokes and calling us the n-word all the time?
Other white people: oh that’s easy. Deal.
White prople: we’re still gonna do it, while still doing all that other bad stuff to you too. And we’re gonna be really obvious about it.
Other white people: sorry blacks but it’s not even that big of a deal anymore... can’t you just ignore it? You gotta just work hard and handle your own problems sometimes!
Black people: okay white people have issues.
White people: RACIST! (keep ruining their economy and education and throwing them in jail and shooting them)
Other white people: Hey those other white people are right! We’re helping you and THIS is the thanks we get? You want us to never say anything bad about you but you can say whatever about us? See THIS is why all those racist white people hate you so much and voted to make the country worse for all of us. This is YOUR fault.
Oh wait, a newcomer!
Third group of white people: Man us white people are really doing a lot of crazy shit, which is really common sense and can be seen by examine history and just analyzing modern western society. We’re really sorry black people. Truly sorry for all we’ve done and continue to do. We will fight for equality, always.
Black people: thank you, I guess but we’ll see?... in the mean time we’re sorry about all these black people getting really angry and hateful towards you... we’ve just been through all this stuff and we are trying to get a handle on it.
Third group of white people: it’s okay! We understand. We’ve put you through a lot and still continue to, and yeah it stings sometimes, but it doesn’t really affect my life that much, but I recognize that the power imbalance between our two groups means that we antagonize you it carries much more weight and is far more harmful. We won’t let that stop us from always defending and fighting for you and trying to make things better.
Black people: thank you, sincerely. We will also help and fight with you but it may be hard for us after everything that’s happened, but we can guarantee that we will never ever give up.
First group of white people: distinguished black fellow distinguished black fellow JAIL DRUGS GUNS POLICE FOX NEWS NRA TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP.
Second group of white prople: Things are great! We fixed racism. Stop complaining.
Black people:.....
White people: sorry...