A Guide to Racism 101 for Clueless White People, Written by a Slightly Less Clueless White Person

[tamago23]

People of Color (PoC) encounter this on a regular basis: they're online or in real life and suddenly a white person, who barely understands privilege or racism, is demanding that they educate them regarding the topic. The white person says, in essence, "Hi! What can I do to help fix racism?" or "Hi! Can you explain racism to me?" or "Hi! What's

Comments

[tamago23]

Thanks for the heads-up re: debunkingwhite, it's been fixed. :)

[xshardsx]

I have several problems with this.

For one, there are more kinds of power than institutional power. Furthermore, within the major institution of overarching society are numerous microcosms wherein the power dynamics can be very different. I mean, come on. You live in Toronto. This should be readily apparent. If- as has happened to a friend of mine- a white person is, say, shopping in Chinatown and is repeatedly harassed, insulted, and (this did happen) in one case even spat upon by Chinese people, are you really going to go so far as to say these are not racist behaviours? Just because most other places are white-dominant? Proclaiming ethnically owned and settled areas to still be "white man's land" because of the majority composition of the rest of the country strikes me to be incredibly counterproductive

[arhyalon]

You are right. You are not. Don't believe otherwise. ;-)

But it is still nice to know how others think.

[tamago23]

See #5: put down that strawman! I'm not asking you to feel guilt, or be denigrated. There's no point to that and it doesn't get us anywhere. Just be aware of it so that you can avoid deliberately (but unconsciously) using it at the expense of others.

Nor did I say anywhere that all white people are automatically racists. None of my points are "#. Accept that you're a racist." While the fact that we benefit from the system of racism is undeniable, nowhere do I make the implication that this means we're all holding offensive opinions about other races or being overtly racist.

[guingel]

Very cool of you to do this - I'm pretty new to the whole "being aware of my privilege" educated discussions about race thing, so I will definitely be following some of your links that I hadn't been to before. (On a related note, I think there's no underscore in debunkingwhite)

[tamago23]

Thanks! It's been fixed. And I basically wrote this guide so I can just step in and post a link when I come across yet another discussion where a white person is demanding education, LOL. Hopefully this'll be straightforward enough to get them started, and once they start learning, they'll be able to figure out where to go from there. :)

[guingel]

Yeah after I commented I noticed that someone else already pointed that out. Whoops! And then I was going to edit my comment to say that I'd noticed that but it seemed slightly neurotic. XD

Also, since this kind of is a post about white people learning about racism, I wanted to say I've actually found that I feel far LESS "liberal white guilt" since actively engaging with anti-racism struggles. I'm not sitting around in ignorance anymore, potentially making things worse without realizing it, which is kind of the least I can do, and maybe eventually I'll be able to have a more positive impact of some sort.

I mean, feeling productive in some way always helps me get rid of stress, but really. It just. . . isn't a self-loathing exercise.

[tamago23]

Honestly, I've come to the conclusion that howling about guilt and that sort of thing is just another reflexive privilege-protection technique. "Well, I'm not going to feel guilty about it, so there!" But it's a strawman; nobody's demanding that they feel guilty about it! But if they can feel upset about "being expected to feel guilt" any time somebody mentions privilege and/or racism, then they can focus on that instead of really focusing on the topic itself.

I used to suffer with severe depression and spent a good many years feeling deeply guilty about everything I'd ever done in my life that had hurt other people. Part of the recovery process, for me, was learning to forgive myself and release that guilt, by realizing that me feeling guilty didn't help anyone. It didn't change what I'd done in the past, my guilt-related suffering wasn't fixing things on some sort of karmic woo-woo level, it didn't fix anything for the future (because plenty of people continue to do things even as they feel guilty about them). Seriously, guilt is

[arhyalon]

Thanks. I bookmarked it in case the subject should come up again, we can have a good place to start.

I do note, though, that the many many people I know who are not white (not one of them calls themself a "person of color" so, in deference to their preferences, I won't use that term in reference to them) do not agree with these particular points.

It is important to keep in mind that this represents a section of the population..abiet, perhaps, a large one...but not everyone. Quite a few people--the ones who are affected, I mean, take quite a different approach.

What is difficult about our times is the very same words and approach that would please one group offends the other.

Still...thanks for the effort.

[tamago23]

PoC is a commonly-used phrase in a lot of anti-racist circles because it doesn't carry the offensive connotations of "not white" (which is once again "normalizing white" - making white the default, and anything else is "not white"). Generally, a PoC is going to refer to what they are specifically (a Korean, a black woman, a Kenyan, whatever) rather than lumping themselves into an amorphous category like "PoC". But for the purposes of these discussions, PoC is a useful shorthand.

Quite a few people--the ones who are affected, I mean, take quite a different approach.

Xposted from a comment above: I do, often, see PoC attempting to educate. But far more often I see the scenario outlined above, where a clueless white person demands an education, the PoC says, "Um no, I'm not here to be your teacher," and then the white person gets butthurt. This was written as a direct response to that scenario, so that I can step in and say, "Hi, here's a link you may find helpful."

What is difficult about our times is the very same words and

[arhyalon]

Well, thanks again for going to the trouble.

If you want to post me a link, could you do it here? I can't find anything on my blog. ;-)

[tamago23]

Certainly. :) It was in reference to you saying you were adopting a Chinese girl - there's a lot of blogs out there written by Asian adoptees and the unique struggles they face, and I figured if you hadn't come across those yet, it might be good for you to spend some time "looking from the inside out", as it were.

Anti-Racist Parent: this is a good all-around anti-racist blog.

Some blogs by adopted Asian-Americans:
The Transracial Korean Adoptee Nexus
Ethnically Incorrect Daughter: a Vietnamese woman adopted by Americans
Ungrateful Little BastardIn the links to the right of any of those blogs you'll see links to lots of other adoptee blogs, so there's plenty of resources out there

[tamago23]

Yeah, I finally wrote this so I could just link to it rather than saying the same things repeatedly. ;)