from shakesville, "racism fatigue"

[superblue]

"But we can't all see it in the Vogue cover. So when we start talking about the Vogue cover as part of a long tradition of racist imagery that casts African-American men as aggressive apes, we get a much more useful conversation going. Instead of just a bunch of white liberals saying, "That's horrible!" and a bunch of white supremacists saying, "No, it's right on!" we get to see all the grey areas of privilege brought out in the open: those of us who try to be anti-racist and educate ourselves accordingly but still missed the racism there until it was pointed out to us; those of us who sorta see it once it's pointed out but still think people are making a mountain out of a molehill; and most importantly, those of us who missed it in the first place and, on the basis of that, continue to insist it is not there.

We've been talking a lot around here recently about that last category of people, with regard to sexism. The people who actually live as the subjects of discrimination and hatred are not oversensitive; we are sensitized to the more subtle manifestations of those things, because we've seen how they're wielded against us, over and over and fucking over. So many people have trouble grasping the concept of "privilege" and will respond to having their own pointed out with laundry lists of the disadvantages they've experienced in their lives. But privilege, in this sense, is not just about obvious advantages. It is about the luxury of not seeing the subtle shit."

read more here please.