White People Explain Why They Feel Oppressed

[MrScorpio]

TOURE
Sep 17 2015, 12:00pm

I just didn't understand how so many white people in American could believe that they are the primary victims of racism. So, I asked some white folks about it to find out why.

Excerpt:

What Is Racism?

Some of the white people I talked with feel like many white people lack of a deep understanding of race and racism. Tim Wise said, "Whites are used to thinking of racism as an interpersonal thing, rather than institutional. So we can recall that time we got shitty customer service by a black person, or had some black person make fun of us for something, and we think, 'we're the victims of racism now,' paying no attention to the ongoing systemic imbalance in our favor." This is in part because the nature of privilege is that you don't have to think deeply about your privilege if you don't want to.

Erikka Knuti, a political strategist, said, "Part of white privilege has been the ability to not know that your privilege exists. If you benefit from racism, do you really want to know that?" I can see where it would be uncomfortable for people to admit that their lives are shaped by unearned advantages, especially in an environment where those advantages may be beginning to slip away, but the blindness itself is a part of the problem. White people have duties as part of the American community. They must be honest with themselves and their co-citizens and admit that white privilege shapes a lot of life in this country. They must understand that the truly pernicious, life-defining sort of racism is not interpersonal, it's institutional. The systems that shape who lives where, who gets educated, who gets jobs, who gets arrested, and so on, these things shape lives, and they are all heavily weighted in white people's favor. To ignore all of that is to misunderstand America. If white people admit those things, it will be plain that they are not, in any way, victims.


https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/qbxzpv/white-people-told-me-why-they-feel-they-oppressed-456?utm_campaign=sharebutton%3Futm_campaign%3Dsharebutton%3Futm_campaign%3Dsharebutton%3Futm_campaign%3Dsharebutton