Wanda/Wander
Member
After the election of Donald Trump, there were a lot of think pieces and hot takes about how the solution to racism is for black people to spend the rest of their lives trying to convince racists that racism is bad. I don’t think that is the correct solution. Trying to convince racists that they are wrong does not work. I know people are going to bring up that Vox article to try and prove me wrong. However I’ll put that article against the entirety of American History.
Telling black people that they need to try and convince racist people to stop, or to try understand “where they are coming from” implies we haven’t been trying to do that during our entire existence.
The fight for equality in America has been just that. A fight.
You don’t like slavery? Fine we’ll have a civil war.
You survived the civil war, okay now live through reconstruction.
Don’t like reconstruction? Well now here’s Jim Crow.
You were able to defeat Jim Crow during the Civil Rights Movement?
Alright, then we’ll criminalize blackness.
Welcome to era of mass incarceration and police brutality.
So, people banded together and told the government it’s not right to criminalize blackness because black lives matter.
And how did this country respond?
We elected Donald Trump. A billionaire that lives in a golden tower who has spent the last 8 years telling our first Black president to go back to Africa. He is a President Elect who stresses the importance of saying “Radical Islamic Terrorists” but will never say that “Black Lives Matter”, because frankly he doesn’t believe they do.
The fight for American Civil Rights has been brutal trench warfare for centuries. People have spent their entire lives fighting against this multi-headed beast called institutional racism that just keeps regenerating and rebranding itself after every battle. Institutionalized racism is nowhere close to being defeated, but that hasn't stopped our slow crawl towards progress.
However with the election of Donald Trump this is the first time in our nation’s history where we’ve taken a significant step backwards in terms of civil rights and equality.
Throughout the history of the fight for equality for every voice that says we need “change” and to “move forward” there were also voices within the movement that say we need to “slow down” or “let’s try to reason with them”. However trying to negotiate with racists will never work because our end goals are completely different. Contrary to popular belief “both sides” aren’t the same. Racists believe in supremacy, while non-racists believe in equality.
supremacy =/= equality
The narrative that we should coddle racists isn’t a new idea. It’s been around forever.
However what is new is the internet.
The notion that a black dude in jersey can instantly share their experience of oppression with a Chinese woman in Arizona is ground breaking. I think we take for granted that there are real divisions between people who are referred to as “Latino” or “Asian” or “Arab” or “Black” or "LGBT+", etc. I also think we take for granted that there are real divisions within those groups too.
So, instead of trying to understand our oppressors we should focus our energy on embracing intersectionality and trying to understand our fellow oppressed so we can breakdown these artificial divisions between us and from a coalition that can collectively not only defeat institutionalized racism, but also homophobia, islamophobia, sexism, classism and other type of -ism's these motherfukcers try to throw at us.
Telling black people that they need to try and convince racist people to stop, or to try understand “where they are coming from” implies we haven’t been trying to do that during our entire existence.
The fight for equality in America has been just that. A fight.
You don’t like slavery? Fine we’ll have a civil war.
You survived the civil war, okay now live through reconstruction.
Don’t like reconstruction? Well now here’s Jim Crow.
You were able to defeat Jim Crow during the Civil Rights Movement?
Alright, then we’ll criminalize blackness.
Welcome to era of mass incarceration and police brutality.
So, people banded together and told the government it’s not right to criminalize blackness because black lives matter.
And how did this country respond?
We elected Donald Trump. A billionaire that lives in a golden tower who has spent the last 8 years telling our first Black president to go back to Africa. He is a President Elect who stresses the importance of saying “Radical Islamic Terrorists” but will never say that “Black Lives Matter”, because frankly he doesn’t believe they do.
The fight for American Civil Rights has been brutal trench warfare for centuries. People have spent their entire lives fighting against this multi-headed beast called institutional racism that just keeps regenerating and rebranding itself after every battle. Institutionalized racism is nowhere close to being defeated, but that hasn't stopped our slow crawl towards progress.
However with the election of Donald Trump this is the first time in our nation’s history where we’ve taken a significant step backwards in terms of civil rights and equality.
Throughout the history of the fight for equality for every voice that says we need “change” and to “move forward” there were also voices within the movement that say we need to “slow down” or “let’s try to reason with them”. However trying to negotiate with racists will never work because our end goals are completely different. Contrary to popular belief “both sides” aren’t the same. Racists believe in supremacy, while non-racists believe in equality.
supremacy =/= equality
The narrative that we should coddle racists isn’t a new idea. It’s been around forever.
However what is new is the internet.
The notion that a black dude in jersey can instantly share their experience of oppression with a Chinese woman in Arizona is ground breaking. I think we take for granted that there are real divisions between people who are referred to as “Latino” or “Asian” or “Arab” or “Black” or "LGBT+", etc. I also think we take for granted that there are real divisions within those groups too.
So, instead of trying to understand our oppressors we should focus our energy on embracing intersectionality and trying to understand our fellow oppressed so we can breakdown these artificial divisions between us and from a coalition that can collectively not only defeat institutionalized racism, but also homophobia, islamophobia, sexism, classism and other type of -ism's these motherfukcers try to throw at us.
