an analogy to explain why the privileged are responsible for ending oppression: racist babysitter

[belenen]

icon: "powerful (Frazetta's "Sun Goddess": a person with large breasts and belly and thick muscular thighs, standing with arms out and head back, knife in one hand, sabertooth tiger snarling by their side)"Imagine that a racist babysitter is watching after a white kid and a black kid. And she has two cookies that she's going to give to the kids.

Comments

[not_hothead_yet]

the only problem I have with the (otherwise excellent) analogy is that many times the white kid does not honestly know they've been given extra cooky. Maybe the sitter gives it to them separately or secretly or whatever but the white kid does not always know they ahve extra. They see the black kid eating cooky and they are eating cooky too so how are they supposed to know the black kid isn't just saying "she gave you more"? White people have to take stories of racism on faith and while you and I know that stories of racism are true, for some white people its very hard to really grok that the cookies are not divided fairly. Especially in situations where the cookie is all they get for dinner. When both kids are hungry but one of them has a few scraps more its even harder to make them understand that fairness dictates they share.

[raidingparty]

Or to further convolute the metaphor, babysitter has five cookies, tells kid 1 they can get three cookies if they do three pushups, then tells kid 2 they can get two cookies if they do two. Now kid 1 is sure it's fair because they did more than kid 2.

[queerbychoice]

Thank you for sharing this! I like it a lot (even though not_hothead_yet's critique makes a very good point too).