As posted in the other thread pertainins to racism, I will copy what I said and paste it here, as I feel it is relevant here too...
The exhibition of white previlige in this thread is flooring to me. But I do not know why at this point. It is the same thing on this forum year to year. It is the same thing in life. People who have lived a life of white privelige telling members who have encountered racism, first hand, their entire lives that racism is not not happening when it is a clear factor in many of the Big Brother series, or life circumstances. It is amazing because I know many white people know racism exists, but they have not had to put up with it all their lives - it's subtly, in many instances. It's covertness. They can only really see it when it is slapping them in the face a lot of the time, because it has not been a factor of their lives since birth. And EVEN in some of the obvious cases, you will get some white people trying to explain it away as not being racism. (That is not even talking about some of a few white men who recently told me that racism has long gone with a serious face, but that is beside the point. It has not gone. It is just not PC to be overt about it, so it has become covert and subtle in many instances, that which a person who has experienced racism before will STILL be able to pick up on) It is something that many white people truly appear to be blind to, hence why when people point out that racism is a factor, many white people will often find every other explination to explain why racism is not a factor, because they are not racist themselves and often cannot imagine it playing such a role. We'll hear things like, 'stop pulling the race card,' or the classic, 'well YOU are the racist one.''
It is mad how the privelige itself allows those in a priveliged position to tell the systematically opressed what is and what is not racism, when the privelige is the very thing that makes them blind to the more sublte essences of racism. YET, the privelige is so established that it states that it knows what oppression is better than the oppressed, from a PLACE of privelige!!! This is deep rooted stuff. Yes, there are some cases where yelling racism is ridiculous. But in the majority of cases, there is validity to it, and having people tell you - as a person of color - to stop pulling the race card, when you have much more of a feel for what constitutes racism than they ever will, will never cease to be offensive.
Did any of you guys ever see that experiment, where the person of color sat down beside a white girl at the bus shelter, said he did not have enough money, and kindly asked her if she could spare some change? Firstly, as soon as he sat down, she scooted over. (And I bet she does not even think she is racist, but the societal brainwashing that she, along with others, have undergone as it pertains to race, caused her to respond that way automatically. The fear was instanty within her as soon as the boy sat down, because he was black, thanks to societal programming. The same fear that causes many white people to be on guard around black people, so that the moment a black person expresses a negative emotion, we are instantly being 'aggressive' because that was what the white person was expecting and looking for for the beginning) Anyway, she said no she did not have any spare change. The boy left shortly after,
They did the same thing with a white boy shortly after, with the same white girl. She did not scoot over when her sat next to her, and when asked if she had spare change, she happily handed the money over. I think they even had a brief casual conversation. The white boy - the actor - was later shown to be visibly upset and SHOCKED by how different her reactions were, because he was not privy to just how much of a factor racism is in the day to day life of a person of color, since he has not had to live that experience himself. There is definitely a blindspot when it comes the racism and many white people, and it is down to white privelige. They know racism is a thing, in the majority, but do not know the extent to which is is a factor because of the lacking experience. On top of that, many of those who carry racist programming will never admit that they hold racist views, when they in fact do!! Many without even being aware of it. We are all a product of our envoriment, sadly. The views are often in us, whether we consciously subscribe to them or not. Whether we consciously WANT to subscribe to them or not.