you can only measure emotional selfishness in bad times / racism is a system, bigotry is an attitude
icon: "voltaic (photo of me with rainbow reflections on my face, leaning my head at a sharp angle and staring intently at the camera)"
I can't bear selfishness, especially when it kills empathy. If you can't care about someone else's feelings when you are angry at them or hurt by them, what good is your love? NONE. it is USELESS. And I know that sometimes I am selfish like this, but I try my best not to be and when I fuck it up and don't keep compassion present, I apologize and do my best to help heal any hurt I have caused. That's what I ask from others. I'm not sure if selfishness should be a dealbreaker, or how many times it takes to decide that it's not just occasional accidents but the general way of handling things.
Doing stuff for other people that makes you feel good is not a test of love, not remotely. You can be the most romantic, gift-giving, affectionate-words-using, cuddly, playful, service-giving person when you're happy, but if you turn into an attacking beast when you're upset, that means you are NOT LOVING, you just like the reactions your niceness gives. Love doesn't vanish when anger or hurt happens. Selfish giving does vanish. You can tell how much someone loves you by how well they treat you when they are upset with you.
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all white people are racist. not all white people are bigoted. racism is a system you are born into. bigotry is an attitude you can choose.
I'm using the sociological definition of racism as an institutionalized system of inequality. Individual acts of bigotry against white people are not called racism because they aren't something that exists in a nation-wide or world-wide way, enforced by laws and educational systems and media etc. Bigotry based on your skin is painful and horrible to experience no matter who you are. But if it was racism, a systemic problem, then every white person you know would have a similar set of daily experiences. People hating you for who you are is bigotry, prejudice- it only becomes oppression if it is something that no one in your group can escape. If I try to make it as simple as possible, bigotry is an individual problem which can be escaped by avoiding those individuals who are bigoted. Racism is a social system which cannot be escaped because you can't avoid the laws and other forms of institutional inequality like educational systems. Sometimes white people suffer under bigotry, but white people never have to deal with racism, at least not in the US.