In today’s society, the topic of racism is even more discussed; with the addition of social media, such as Twitter, to help add fuel to the mostly-ignored stories of the shootings of black people – more and more people are bringing awareness to it. However, as well as the tragedies bringing awareness towards the topic, it has also caused more and more people to fully ignore the facts and events that is happening around them and caused them to hide it in the back of their heads – refusing to accept it.
Race is a social construct made by the white people who colonised non-European countries, stripped away their cultures and enslaved their people. Social construct meaning that it is “a system humans invented to (poorly) explain human variation [as] race is not biological.”
It’s after-effect, sibling or close friend, racism, is the system that was created to assist this social construct – specifically created to disadvantage those who are of colour in everything that they do; whether it be in economical, social or political reasons – which is why white privilege exists and reverse racism doesn’t.
Even then, racism goes even deeper in communities of colour – having black people at the very bottom of the pyramid where people of colour with lighter skin are situated at the top; so many cultures, including mine, has many anti-black beliefs deep rooted within its communities. Influenced by many Western beliefs due to colonisation, many communities of colour have anti-blackness ingrained into their upbringings – in which is a whole other branch of racism itself.
It is only hopeful for a person to think that once the topic of race is brought up, everyone has some sort of background knowledge into its aspects. But even then, this is too hopeful for most situations.. Bringing up topics such as the Black Lives Matter Movement in a room full of majorly white people can either make a most very open to discuss it and accept the facts, or to the other end of the spectrum, where most people are very uncomfortable. That shouldn’t be the case.
It is not difficult to educate yourself or listen to someone – especially a person of colour, when it comes to such topics as race. Although it is hard to accept such realities and truths, it is important to always stay open minded – ask questions on aspects that you don’t understand.
Understand that it is so much deeper than a dictionary definition.
The fact that the word “black” or “Asian” makes some white people uncomfortable says enough. White people should educate themselves on their privilege, on the true meaning of racism as well as the true effects of it. Being stereotyped as having no seasoning in your food isn’t the same as being shot on the street for being black, being kicked out of a store for being black or being told that your entire ethnicity group are “rapists” and “criminals” by the President-Elect himself as one of his starting statements for his campaign. According to Bottle Magazine,
“an individual black person with a college degree doesn’t have to run into a racist in an alley to be discriminated against—he need only apply for a job. He’s less likely to be hired than a white person with a criminal record.“
Which is why white people’s stereotypes only affect them to the surface of jokes, while stereotypes about people of colour can affect them in every aspect of their daily life, such as previously mentioned, applying for a job. Another example of how stereotypes negatively affect people of colour – specifically black people in America is when a woman was told to “cut” her dreads due to company policy – most likely to be influenced by the stereotype that dreads on black people are “dirty”.
It should also be known that racism “never went away” with the election of a Black president, or the acceptance of people of colour within the media; it has been sitting in the back of the minds of those who were not affected by it, while it worked against people of colour every single day.
Conversations based on inevitable events in the future shouldn’t have to be uncomfortable for all people of colour; it should never result in a situation where a white person was offended because it isn’t “All Lives Matter“, or that a person simply corrected them on the definition of a word and they’re now acting as if saying “white people can’t dance” is as bad as the racism that people of colour go through. These type of conversations should end in a way where the uneducated people are now educated on some topics because they were able to have an open mind and listen.
