Racism and White Privilege-Oh Boy

Greetings my dear fans on the interwebs! This week's blog post is all about racism, white privilege, and debunking ridiculous arguments of "reverse racism!"

First, I think it's important to define what exactly having privilege means. In it's simplest form, it means just having certain advantages from being born a certain social class, race, sexuality, or gender. IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A BAD PERSON. IT ALSO DOES NOT GUARANTEE YOU A PERFECT LIFE.

Racism is defined by sociologists as prejudice PLUS POWER. Meaning, BOTH are required for racism to exist against a certain race. And the kind of power I speak of is political power.

Now, how does this apply to white people? Can POC be prejudiced against white people? HELL YEAH they can! And they have every reason to, considering how their ancestors were treated and how they're still treated today. But do POC have equal political power? Have they ever passed laws forcing whites to be enslaved, defining them as less than human because of their race, or committed a mass genocide to steal land from a peaceful civilization? No, they most certainly did NOT! White people still hold an overwhelming amount of political power, even in areas where they lack a majority, and the laws that affect POC are still racist.

Old time racism was explicit. There were laws that literally said "white people are better" and "children of color don't deserve the same education because they're less human." Lynchings were common until the 1970's. I kid you not. And obviously slavery and laws that kept POC from voting were explicitly racist. The average person could look at a slavery law and see the obvious racism. I mean, black people only counted as 3/5ths of a whole person! Nobody could look at that and go "Nope, I see no racism here."

For an example of racism in my own everyday life, one need only to look at the synonyms for black and white. Black and brown are associated with dirt, grime, death, sorrow, bad, evil. White is viewed as pure, perfect, beautiful, innocent, good. With definitions like this it's no wonder POC tend to have lower self esteem than white people.

Implicit racism is a whole nother villain. It's the same nasty racism, but hidden undercover in laws, making it hard to detect and erase. It's the fact that most POC live in poverty, the fact that "stop and frisk" laws even exist! And implicit racism is like the nasty gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. No matter how much or how hard you scrub, it won't go away. Because from the time you were born, you were absorbing the racist messages society sends out. And pretending to be colorblind will only make the problem worse. A problem doesn't go away if you ignore it-you can't will away cancer by ignoring it, it only spreads and gets worse. You can preach that you "don't see race" all you want but the fact of the matter is you're dead wrong. We all see race and it DOES matter.

What's even sadder is that even POC are prejudiced in favor of white people. They feel bad because they don't have the same skin color and are never told they're pretty. There was a doll experiment done on little kids, both black and white. They were shown 2 dolls, a white one and a black one, and were asked questions like "which doll is better" and told to pick the doll they wanted. Overwhelmingly, even the little black children were associating the white doll with good and the black doll with bad. That study breaks my heart every time.

In class we watched a video called "White Like Me" about a white guy preaching to other white people what POC have been saying for centuries, that "reverse racism" is utter malarky, having privilege does not make you a bad person, etc. etc. But of course, nobody listens until a white guy says it. That's ALWAYS the way it is with allies. A marginalized (yes this includes LGBT+ people and is a preferred term over "minority" because we're less rare than you think we are-speaking from experience here) group says something regarding their oppressed status but are ignored because they're not seen as humans and their experiences are not valued. Such is the case until an "ally" chimes in and basically repeats the same thing. Suddenly everyone listens. It's frustrating to the extreme.

But what can you, the Average Joe do? First and foremost, LISTEN to the experiences of POC. Do NOT let yourself get defensive. You are not being attacked when someone vents their frustrations. Privilege is not personal.

Deviance and Classism in America

So far this unit we have learned about deviance (violating social norms) and social class.

An example of deviance would be from the article called "Saints and Roughnecks" about rich kids who misbehaved and they were much less likely to get jail time or really in trouble called the "Saints," versus poor kids who caused the same trouble but were punished much more harshly because they're poor called the "Roughnecks." This shows that rich people can get out of trouble using bribery and getting a good lawyer, while also saying poor people are screwed. It should also be noted exactly WHAT crimes are mostly committed by different social classes. The rich are mostly stealing money, polluting the environment, and violating health regulations established by the FDA. Yet these horrible crimes get them few years in jail IF ANY at all! But the poor are doing mostly petty crimes like shoplifting clothes, tobacco products, or alcohol. Sometimes they have to steal just to get by. But they're punished much much harsher.

We also watched a movie called "The Line" on how poor people live dangerously close to the poverty line. It should be pointed out that being poor is expensive. They can't afford health insurance or good cars, so one medical bill or one broken car part can put them into poverty. The government services and food pantries do their best but they just can't do enough. Why the hell are the republicans cutting food stamps, WIC, and other helping services when more and more people are struggling to get by? It's INFURIATING! It makes me SO ANGRY that in the world's richest country so many struggle to get by!

Of course, I'm upper middle class/rich, so I realize that I'm no expert on poverty. I've never worried about where my next meal is coming from or had to wonder if I should quit school to help feed the family. I'm lucky. I'm privileged and I know it. But both my parents grew up poor. They taught me about poverty, and I've volunteered at a food pantry, I've seen homeless people. I know I live in the bubble. But I also know I have the power to change it. And boy will I fight the system.

My mom is the principal at a school in Mt. Prospect that has mostly poor children of color. Before she came to the school, the poor children were never even TOLD that college was an option. But since she came along, she's been pushing the school to teach all the kids that college is an option (where do you think I got my stubbornness and pushiness from?).

Let's not forget which races are trapped in poverty overwhelmingly. That would be POC, especially black women. Centuries upon centuries of institutionalized racism has kept them from education and other tools that could help launch them out of poverty. And society sees them as "welfare queens" who contribute nothing to society. But that's a bunch of racist malarky. The REAL "welfare queens" are the scumbag corporations that force us taxpayers to subsidize their starvation wages and take care of their employees' hospital bills. That's why I hate capitalism. Nothing good can possibly come from having wealth in only a few hands, poor wages, bad health care, polluted environment, etc. That's why socialism would be a much better choice.

I've very happy that several states (Washington and Hawaii off the top of my head) are pushing their minimum wages up more, and especially happy with Seattle for it's $15 minimum wage! Hopefully the rest of the country will follow in it's footsteps.

If you don't believe that people deserve an equal chance to succeed, then get out of the way or you'll be squashed by my steamroller. Change is coming and you better get with the program because you can't stop me.