Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Here are 13 figures that illustrate how bad health care access for women of color in our country really is.
136%. How much America’s maternal mortality rate has increased between 1990 and 2013.
Colorlinesreports that the United States jumped from a rate of 12 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births to 28 per 100,000 — all in the span of 23 years. That’s twice the rate of Saudi Arabia, and three times that of the United Kingdom. The primary reason cited is a lack of access to quality insurance and adequate medical resources.
3-4. The number of times higher the national maternal mortality rate is for black women than white women. This figure has held relatively steady for the past 40 years, according to the CRR report.
94. The number of black maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in Fulton County, Ga., which includes the city of Atlanta.
That’s more than three times the national average. The rate for white women in the same county is “essentially zero,” according to Colorlines, i.e., “too insignificant to report.”
77%. How much higher the maternal mortality rate is in states with higher populations of people living below the poverty line, when compared to states with smaller impoverished populations, according to Colorlines (citing a 2010 Amnesty International report).
Low-income populations in the U.S. are disproportionately made up of black, Latina and Native American women. The report claims these disparities are especially apparent in Southern states with high black and Latino populations, namely parts of Georgia, Mississippi and Texas.
1. The number of clinics in the state of Mississippi that provide abortions. Mississippi’s population is 37.4% black and nearly 25% poor — significantly higher than the national average for both categories.
19. The number of states (including almost all in the South) that have opted out of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Needless to say, this is disturbing: Expanding Medicaid would allow for unprecedented access to affordable contraception for low-income women, and women of color in particular.
This is important for one key reason: Contraception is not only a vital component of effective family planning, but according to some, a proven means of combating poverty.
72%. The percent decrease in women receiving health care services in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley over the past few years, Colorlines reports. The region has recently become “ground zero” for America’s ongoing debate around treatment of immigrants without documents for the U.S., originating primarily in Mexico and Central America.
70%. How much greater the likelihood thatan immigrant woman of reproductive age will lack health insurance, as compared to her U.S.-born peers. This figure has a clear racial bent: Most immigrants to the U.S. come from either Mexico or Asia.
5. The number of years immigrants must wait before they’re eligible for Medicaid under federal law. Texas, home to the nation’s second largest Latino population, makes them wait even longer, according to Colorlines.
1 in 3. How many Native American women will be sexually assaulted or raped in their lifetime, according to the Center for American Progress. That’s 3.5 times higher than any other racial group. An added problem hereis that federally funded health care facilities on reservations — where about 30% of Native Americans live — lack the capacity to treat and care for victims: CAP reports that women often must travel hundreds of miles just to receive a rape kit and STI screening.
35.1. The number of new black female AIDS cases per 100,000 women age 13 and over in 2009, according to a 2011 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report. Compare that to 7.9 casesfor Hispanic women and 1.5 for white women.
66%. The percentage of new female HIV cases nationwide which black women comprise. Forbesreports that HIV/AIDS is now the leading cause of death among black women age 25-34.
4.3. The cervical cancer death rate per 100,000 among black women nationwide — twice the rate for white women. The difference is so stark it has attracted the attention ofresearchers, who examined the disparity by focusing on the state of Maryland and published their findings in PLOS ONE health journal.
Among their troubling discoveries: Between 1999 and 2008, black women were far more likely to receive radiation or chemotherapy as their only form of treatment, regardless of their stage of cancer. White women, on the other hand, were significantly more likely to receive “multi-modality treatment,” incorporating surgery, chemo and radiation, andresulting in higher survival rates.
Researchers concluded the disparity is rooted in a few key factors. Oneis the lack of health care access for black women; the other is a deliberately discriminatory approach to treatment from medical practitioners.
The takeaway: The next time someone tells you we have a functioning and equitable health care system in America, show them these numbers. Any nation that claims medical equality but allows factors like race and gender, compounded by corresponding issues like poverty, politics and legal access, to prevent specific groups of people from healing is nothing short of hypocritical.
When I was 14 or so, I asked my grandmother why we didn’t have a “white club” at school. I don’t recall her response, but I do remember feeling particularly smug and vaguely angry that there was a “Latino” club and a “Chinese” club but not a “white” club.
Oh the unfairness! Oh the disparity! Why do we celebrate their heritage but not ours?
And I didn’t think about race again, at least not much, until I dated an African American man in college and a stranger whispered “nigger lover” in my ear one night as he walked by us in a grocery store. Disgusting.
I figured he was a strange exception of horrible racist creature. He was, after all, approximately 97 years old. (Well, 70, but he appeared 97 to my fresh young eyes.)
And then, a few months later, when my boyfriend’s roommate took me aside and asked why I have to “take a good black man who was in college,” when so many black men were incarcerated. I concluded she was crazy. And mean.
She hurt my feelings. Poor Janelle.
Beyond these few moments, and a couple others, I didn’t really think about race. Well, I thought about how people made arguments “about race” when clearly they were not. I mean why do they make race an issue? It’s obviously not.
Oh yeah, I had America all figured out: If ya work hard, you get ahead. And if you don’t get ahead, it’s because you made bad decisions. And if you get arrested it’s because you’re breaking the law, and people who break the law are more likely to be black. Obviously. That’s why they’re always getting arrested. (How’s that for some cyclic logic?)
I knew this to be true because:
America was awful to black people but that was fixed during the Civil Rights movement;
Therefore, we are all on equal footing now and if you don’t succeed it’s because you aren’t trying.
I learned it in school. It was fact. School teaches the truth.
And then, graduate school, and Professor Lee.
Oh, shit.
“Not all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.”
WHAT THE WHAT?
She made us repeat it like a mantra. At least 3 times. I read Tim Wise’s White Like Me (I have mixed feelings about him now, but I digress) and bell hooks and David Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness and learned how our economic systems benefit from racism and we read about thehistory of American immigration laws (have you ever read them?) and colonialism in the Philippines and elsewhere (yes, America has colonies but we call them “territories”), and we read about redlining and white flight (ever wonder how black people ended up in urban centers?), and we read some DuBois and Omi & Winant and literature by people of color and all of the sudden I realized I had been fucking lied to.
I understood America through white eyes. I understood the world through the mainstream, polished glasses of a nice clean history of “we used to be bad now we’re not the end.”
Go team.
I discovered I was white.
“Not all white people are white supremacists, but all white people benefit from white supremacy.”
She wanted us to see that as individuals, not all white people are bigoted. But she also wanted us to see that every white person – whether they are bigoted or not – benefits from the racially structured hierarchies in America. They benefit from racism.
Yes. Even me. Even though I am not “racist.”
How? And she explained whiteness. She explained that “white” is the standard. White is the background against which difference is measured.
In other words, it’s “white” until further notice. It’s “white” until proven otherwise. It’s “white” or it’s the “other,” and it has nothing to do with actual numbers, percentages of “minority” population. It has to do with power. It has to do with the culture of power. What do I mean? If a comedy film features a white family, it’s a comedy. If it features a black family, it’s a blackcomedy.
Think about it.
White is the standard. And I’m white. Therefore, I am standard, and that benefits me.
When I walk into a room, I don’t fear that I’m representing my whole race. I have never acted badly then thought to myself “Oh shit, I sure hope they don’t hate all white people now.”
Or, in other words, even though pretty much every Columbine-type-school-kid-murderer is white, I’ve never developed a distrust for white, socially awkward high school kids.
A few do not represent the whole.
“Privilege is passed on through history.”
Whatever. I grew up POOR!
But then I thought about how, in the late 1940s, my grandmother was the first woman editor of the University of Washington’s newspaper. After she graduated, she and my grandpa bought and ran small newspapers in northern California. The family business they built employed my family members for 40+ years.
In the late 1940s, black people were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus.
How can I deny that my grandparents’ access to education and economic success did not materially affect me in a positive way, directly, through my father? I thought about the loans my parents were able to take with financial backing from my grandparents, and how that benefitted me. My life. My quality of life. The neighborhoods we lived in. The schools we attended. My cultural knowledge.
“Why don’t we have ‘White History Month?’”
Because White History Month is every month other than February, asshole.
Oh, shit indeed.
“The culture of power determines which version of history is told and retold.”
Prior to the Women’s Rights Movement, women were stuck in the home while men went to work and supported them. But then women were liberated and able to get jobs working outside the home.
Right?
WRONG. White, middle to upper class women were “stuck in the home.” Women of color have ALWAYS “worked out of the home.” In fact, the women of color were probably working in the homes of the white women about which our history is written.
So one of the most oft-repeated, trusted narratives about American history erases the history of women of color. It is dead fucking wrong. It isn’t even kind of right. They are erased. Non-existent. Unseen.
They are Chapter 10. They are a chapter that ends with “but then Martin Luther King, Jr., and all is well.”
They are Chapter 10. I am chapters 1 through forever, and every day I cash in on that fact, whether or not I support the systems making that happen for me.
I realized the reason I had never thought about race was because I was of the privileged one, because I didn’t have to, NOT BECAUSE RACIAL DISPARITY DIDN’T EXIST. I didn’t have to think about race because I was having a fundamentally different life experience than people of color. But I could ignore them, because of my privilege.
I was able to hang out in meltin-pot, “post-racial” land was because the structures of that society allowed (and encouraged) me to “not see race” while continually feeding me narratives about “equality,” “multiculturalism,” “color-blindness” and “ghetto urban lifestyles.”
I spent a lot of time in graduate school in the library, writing at a computer. Like, hours. Whole days. When I had to pee, I would ask the person sitting next to me to watch my stuff so I didn’t have to pack it all up and carry it down the hall to the bathroom. I did it a 100 times.
Once I looked over at the person next to me and my first thought was “Oh you can’t ask him. He’ll steal your stuff.
He was a young black man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt.
I was sickened at myself. I was horrified at my response. There was absolutely nothing different about him than the 100 other people I didn’t hesitate to ask, except he was black.
I realized that not only do I benefit historically and presently, every day, from the color of skin, I have also internalized cultural narratives regarding blacks and whites that manifest whether or not I support them.
“Hey, would you mind watching my stuff for a minute?”
But what now?
Does it mean my grandmother’s accomplishments are less badass? Nope. Does it mean I do not “deserve” success? Nope. Does it mean that I am a bad person? Nope.
It means that we live in a highly racialized society rooted in a history of discrimination and that we have a long way to go. It means that I have had an advantage over people of color. Yes, always. Yes, no matter what. Because even if you’re poor and white you can join the culture of power by learning the walk and talk. But you can’t change your skin color.
From the day I was first introduced to this “other story,” I couldn’t get enough. Not because I’m some sort of saint or conspiracy theorist, but because I was curious. I was interested out of a sense of shared humanity. And I was fucking angry that I had been swindled. I wanted the truth. Or, I wanted a fuller picture. I wanted more sides.
That, my friends, is pathetic in its privilege.
I learned in graduate school what every person of color knows through life experience. I learned in graduate school that we weren’t “fixed” during the Civil Rights movement.
But when this information was presented to me I felt a sense of relief, because I think deep down I always knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I don’t understand the white rage I keep reading on the internet.
Just another dead thug.
He got what he deserved.
Run over the protestors. They’re making me late for work.
STOP PLAYING THE “RACE CARD.”
I don’t understand it. What’s at stake, people? What’s at stake in accepting that racism exists? Or even entertaining the thought? Are people really so stupid they can’t fathom that other people might be having a different experience than they are? Is it really that hard to comprehend that something can exist EVEN THOUGH YOU DON’T PERSONALLY SEE IT?
(Although you’ll see your privilege if you’re willing to examine your life honestly.)
Why the hell are people so unwilling to listen?
Let’s think about this for a moment. A whole community of people are saying this exists. Data shows racial disparities in economic, education, justice, and healthcare systems. Basically, ALL OVER THE PLACE. Unarmed black boys and men are killed without recourse. Repeatedly. The comment sections of these crimes are riddled with assholes shouting “Good. One less loser.”
But people still claim “Racism doesn’t exist.” But here’s the thing: The only way you can discount the words, lives, efforts and voices of hundreds of thousands of people is THROUGH THE RACISM YOU CLAIM DOESN’T EXIST.
You can only ignore them if they’re aren’t worth hearing.
You can only ignore them if they’re liars. If they’re just looking for a handout.
If they’re not human like you.
You can only ignore them by using the very narratives you claim aren’t happening.
And let’s be honest, we can only ignore them because it’s easy, because we’ll never have to walk a day in their shoes, and it’s just so much more pleasant to turn away, look away, focus back on our lives.
But the sand is getting skimpy and our heads are showing. At this point, if we’re not part of the solution we’re part of the problem.
I’m using my voice to talk to you. I’m using my voice to talk to my kids. But it isn’t enough. We’re looking for places to volunteer. I’m looking for actions I can take.
We’re at a crossroads. This cannot go on. We’re crushed under the weight of hatred, history, silence, violence, bullshit media and the insidious defense of systematic unequal distribution of resources, and at some point, none of us will be able to breathe.
It feels small and pathetic to be one person in this mess. I feel stupid and vulnerable and slightly insane to be writing this here, now. But fuck my feelings. Fuck feeling uncomfortable. Fuck the nonsense that keeps us quiet and content and cozy in our little post-racial dreamland.
Just a reminder: thirsty and salty are both AAVE so if you’re white, you shouldn’t say them as a joke, it’s racist (which is the most important thing) and it makes you look like a poser (which is DEFINITELY way less important but still true). Some black slang has long since entered the mainstream lexicon and can’t be blocked out anymore and that’s okay (words like “dude” and “man” and “cool” and even “rock n’ roll” are all based in AAVE), but it’s our job as white people to stay away from using current slang as jokes.
Instead of calling Pearl thirsty you can just call her desperate; instead of calling Pearl salty you can just call her bitter (this post is directed at the Steven Universe fandom, FYI).
I know it seems funny and cool to use AAVE like this but you should examine why you think these words are funny in the first place. Is it because they’re dank memes, or because you think anything black people say or do is inherently hilarious (which is part of why they became memes in the first place)? If it’s the second, you should know that’s rooted in the exotification of black people and black culture and ‘others’ them, which is obviously not okay.
Obviously I’m not an authority on the subject so here’s a link to two black people speaking out about non-black people using AAVE if you’re curious as to why it’s racist:
Using AAVE at all (except for like, “ancient” AAVE, duh) should be kept to a minimum, and it DEFINITELY shouldn’t be used as a joke or to make you seem quirky or funny or cool.
This isn’t to shame any non-black people who’ve used it without knowing or guilt-tripping you at all, because we’re all learning, it’s just some education on your dash because I think the Steven Universe fandom is better than this. Consider this call-out a vote of confidence, I think we can do better.
I’m gonna reblog this ‘cuz overall I agree, but I’m gonna respond to elaborate on some things I’ve been thinking about for a while.
There’s been such an upswing in white people discovering AAVE, appropriating it, using it incorrectly, bastardizing it, then destroying the original context and making it problematic.
Right now I’m noticing this with af (as fuck), and fuckboy.
Honestly if I see one more post on my dash that says something like “bird af” or “arms af” or “couple af”, I’m gonna lose it. See the above “incorrect usage and bastardization”, after the appropriation stage.
Fuckboy has skyrocketed into the destruction phase, mostly because white AFAB trans-masculine people claimed it was a transphobic slur (which never actually existed??) and white feminists began using it to describe any man regardless of how ain’t-shit he actually is…not to mention the fact some people claimed fuckboy originated from the skeleton war meme (which it didn’t???).
This situation has really been irking me, as a black girl who struggles with what “blackness” is supposed to be. Black people, as a cultural influence on each other, have developed our own language as a way of personal communication WITHIN the community. That’s AAVE. Our speech patterns and terms, our slang, our grammar, our daily lives interspersed into the English language, in a way that reflects the daily lives of our communities. That’s ANY area-specific dialect. Except AAVE isn’t just for one city in one state. It transcends an entire race of people.
When you take that, you’re really, truly, no joke, taking part of our culture. When you mock us, you’re poking fun at how entire communities and cities and neighborhoods speak. And if we’re not being mocked for it, or praised for not using it, it’s being stolen from us. Then we’re being mocked again, and put down for “harmful connotation”.
The basic bitch fiasco? That’s the full-blown destruction sequence.
I’m starting to ramble, but as a black person, my personal opinion is that I don’t mind “sharing” AAVE, per se. I don’t have a strong opinion aside from ‘Don’t be an ass about it. Don’t use it for fun, or because you think it’s a joke to talk “like us”.’ Of course, many other black people will not share that state of mind, and my opinion is solely my own. Additionally, I can never condone the appropriation and theft of black culture.
But at the very least, if you’re gonna use it, use it right. Respect the origins. Don’t create your own narrative for a story you aren’t even a character in. Don’t manufacture a background for a term that already has a history. Don’t change the connotations of a word that already has a meaning.
Many important things will be said in the next few weeks about the murder of nine people holding a prayer meeting at a predominantly African American church yesterday. Assuming that Dylann Roof is the murderer and that he made the proclamation being quoted in the media, I want to say: “I am a white woman. No more murder in my name.”
Before gunning down a room full of black worshippers, Roof reportedly said:
I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.
For my two cents, I want to suggest that Roof’s alleged act was motivated by racism, first and foremost, but also sexism. In particular, a phenomenon called benevolent sexism.
Sociologists use the term to describe the attribution of positive traits to women that, nonetheless, justify their subordination to men. For example, women may be described as good with people, but this is believed to make them perform poorly in competitive arenas like work, sports, or politics. Better that they leave that to the men. Women are wonderful with children, they say, but this is used to suggest that they should take primary responsibility for unpaid, undervalued domestic work. Better that they let men support them.
And, the one that Roof used to rationalize his racist act was: Women are beautiful, but their grace makes them fragile. Better that they stand back and let men defend them. This argument is hundreds of years old, of course. It’s most clearly articulated in the history of lynching in which black men were routinely violently murdered by white mobs using the excuse that they raped a white woman.
I stand with Jessie Daniel Ames and her “revolt against chivalry” in the 1920s and ’30s. Ames was one of the first white women to speak out against lynching, arguing that its rationale was sexist as well as racist. Roof is the modern equivalent of this white mob. He believes that he and other white men own me and women like me — “you rape our women,” he said possessively — and so he justified gunning down innocent black people on my behalf. You are vulnerable, he’s whispering to me, let me protect you.
All oppression is interconnected. The matrix of domination must come down. I am a white woman. No more murder in my name.
it’s so wild how black youth aren’t allowed to have rebellious phases because it’s assumed once we display any sort of criminal behavior that’s all we’re ever going to amount to
meanwhile white kids damn near be doing 5 stars in grand theft auto shit and it’s chalked up to teen angst instead of genetics
it’s not fair and I hate it
That’s not even true in the slightest
It is true, and there is absolutely a double standard that disadvantages black teens by painting their behavior as inherent character flaws instead of teen antics. Anecdotes of some white teens being treated like criminals or breaking this norm doesn’t account for larger sociological trends of widespread systemic prejudice against black youth.
so i think i mentioned how my entire junior class got to sit in our auditorium and listen to ruby bridges talk about racism for two hours yesterday, but i didn’t talk about one of the most powerful moments in the presentation?
so we got to the end—like, the last twenty minutes—and she asked for questions. and we had a few standard questions (”how do you feel about people taking their education for granted?” “what would you say to the people who stood outside and protested you going to school if you met them again?”) but there was this kid waiting in the question line fidgeting nervously. and everybody could see it?? when he finally got up to ask his question, he asked her about her opinion on the events on ferguson.
and she mentioned her sons again, who she talked about earlier in the presentation. and then she told us about her son who was murdered. and she talked about the mothers who had their children taken away and how if you took a life unjustly and forsake your role as a keeper of the peace, you should be punished. and then she talked about how everybody chooses a side in this thing; good and evil.
and then she said that racism today is scarier than it was to her when she was growing up.
and the entire junior class was silent.
for those of you who don’t know, Ruby Bridges was the first black american child (one of the first???) to go to an all white school in the south, meaning all those photos you’ve seen of little black kids being harassed by a violent mob full of white adults - she grew up with that. and despite growing up in that environment she still thinks racism today is scarier than when she was growing up. idk but that comment got to me.
to everyone who has said that racism is gone or isnt as bad as it used to be “back then” - here’s someone who grew up “back then” saying that not only is racism is still alive today, but it’s even scarier than it was when she was growing up. go and read that comment again and think about it
It upsets me when people say that Tolkien was a racist because there is nothing to signify he was. He enjoyed other cultures, he studied other cultures. He was fascinated about the world. He was attempting to create a myth about a fantasy world named Arda, which was in some way historically accurate. Not all those with, in his words, “tanned skin” were bad and not all those who had white skin were good. To say he was a racist because he based his story 6000 years in Europe, is wrong.
Tolkien once said, “I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones, and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White”. When the Nazis wrote to him asking if was Jewish, he replied; “I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people” and wanted to tell them they had a “wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine”. I think it may be worth noting that he was born in and raised in South Africa for the first three years of his life. Considering the times he lived in, he wrote some pretty amazing female characters and had some pretty strong opinions against racism (there are many more, look them up!!) when most during his time didn’t.
Tolkien rarely ever described anyone to be in his books with an ethnic origin, he uses words such as “light”, “dark”, “fair skinned”, “darker skinned, “tanned” often instead. The bad characters often wore dark clothes as they do in most literature, he did not intend for it to be seen as racism .In fact, a group of hobbits from the shire, the harfoots are said to be darker skinned, and they aren’t bad!! Of all the main bad guys, most were actually white in the books (Melkor, Sauron, Saruman) most of them were just said to have worn darker clothes.He did not want his work to be taken literally but Tolkien had aimed to create an English mythology because he was sad that there didn’t appear to be one, not just for England but for Europe. He, as the original post said, studied the world and other cultures because he was fascinated with them. He wanted to learn about them and went out of his way to learn them. When questioned about racism, he would speak out against it. He cannot defend himself anymore, but I think he would be horrified at the thought of someone naming him a racist and misinterpreting his intentions!! :)
People most often say Tolkien was racist because of the portrayal of the Orcs.
When someone pointed out to him how it could be interpreted in a racist way, he was horrified, and attempted to go back and revise it.
I think he was racist, but as most have said before me, he was a product of the times, and it would be unjust to judge him by our standards considering what we know today that he had no way of knowing then.
He was certainly less racist than most of his peers and certainly he had a deep love for cultures
Everybody is racist in some way and Tolkien was no different. I certainly don’t think it makes him a bad person, especially since you see through his writing how he tried very hard to correct his earlier instances of racism and also emphasized his love and respect for people not at all like himself. His writing also shows us quite a bit of racism in his portrayals of the Haradrim and the Easterlings.
To say he wasn’t racist is like saying people who believed women shouldn’t be allowed to work because they were raised in an atmosphere that propagated that aren’t sexist.
They are, even if it’s not wholly their fault that they are.
He was racist. But he also tried very hard to unlearn that racism and learn more about the cultures of the world, and that’s something people need to remember. IT’S IMPORTANT THAT WE DO NOT IGNORE THE FLAWS OF THE PEOPLE WE LOOK UP TO, BUT EQUALLY AS IMPORTANT TO NOTE WHEN THE PEOPLE WE LOOK UP TO TRIED TO BE BETTER IN THEIR LIFETIME. Tolkien was racist, and he did so much to unlearn his racism and become a better person in his lifetime, and that matters so much more than the idea that he wasn’t racist at all.
To process this report as just an indictment of one small town is to provide an escape hatch for the many people disinclined, through their own lack of moral courage and intellectual honesty, to admit that the whole darn country has a habit of racially stratified “justice.” We miss the point if we treat Ferguson as some bizarre exception.
So let’s close the escape hatch. Ferguson’s statistics are not shocking. To the contrary, they are replicated nationally. And the Kafkaesque experience of “Michael” reflects everyday reality: Last January, a black man named Chris Lollie was arrested in St. Paul, MN for sitting on a public bench in a skyway between buildings, waiting for his children to get out of school. In September, a black man named Levar Jones was wounded by a state trooper in Columbia, SC, who shot him while he was obeying the trooper’s orders. Last Thanksgiving, a black man named Brandon McKean was stopped in Pontiac, MI, for walking with his hands in his pockets in 32-degree weather.
And so on. Black men and women being manhandled, mistreated and misjudged by the “justice” system is the opposite of uncommon. To whatever degree we pretend the biggest issue here is the sins of one small town, we sanction that ongoing injustice and postpone a reckoning long overdue.
Anonymous: I'm not saying white privilege doesn't exist on a global scale, it does. It just bothers me when Americans try to dictate other people's identifies when they know nothing about their country, or their people's struggles, or treat everyone as though they're American/responsible for American issues, while at the same time not caring at all about issues in other countries.
that imo is “American privilege”- it’s a problem here on tumblr. Like yeah, to my American followers, I know lots of you try to learn and I wouldn’t generalise to say all Americans do this- but there’s a big problem especially amongst popular social justice blogs here.
What is very disturbing about the tumblr social justice discourse is that a lot of popular US social justice bloggers like to splatter the US categorisation of race and understanding of racism over the rest of the world. Race, and racism- are both social creations. Therefore, it only makes sense that they can vary from society to society. Here are some issues:
1. Things like insisting that white people cannot face racism in the world. I’m sorry, but I can tell you that’s BULLSHIT in Europe, at least. How people are othered operates differently sometimes. It’s pretty obvious I have Chinese ancestry, for example, but I speak fluent English. That often makes me seem more assimilated and less of an “Other” in the UK, than the immigrant worker from Poland whose accent is plainly obvious. Do Chinese people face racism in the UK? I’m sure they do sometimes.
But my point is that the way xenophobia and hostility is targeted isn’t always based on skin colour. The Holocaust, the Nazis’ deliberate starvation and mistreatment of Soviet soldiers, the genocide of Bosnians by Serbians are all instances where genocide was committed against people who WOULD be racialised as “white” in the US, who were genetically European. I will seriously throttle anyone who dares to suggest no racism is involved or tries to literally posthumously say claim the victims are “POC” to fit their narrative that global oppression is “White people oppressing POC!!!” ( E.g “Bosnians were not really white because they were Muslims.” WRONG. Genetically they are Slavic people- like Russians, Ukrainians…and Serbians themselves). There was more about cultural otherness, religious divisions at play here, about Serbian nationalism really, rather than seeing Bosnians as “less white”.
Bosnian Muslims in concentration camps in the 1990s
The experiences of “white people” are far from universal AND they can be very familiar with racism, oppression and marginalisation. I mean like try telling a recent Russian immigrant to the US who was descended from Russian serfs that he has MORAL RESPONSIBILITY for slavery in the US? Geez. Yes, maybe he’d benefit from “white privilege” but to say his ancestors benefited from it would be nonsensical when they were getting similarly abused by landowners in the 1800s Imperial Russia. Please tell me how a US POC is necessarily always more familiar with oppression than a Polish person or German whose family lived under Soviet authoritarianism right up till 1989, who lived in fear of the Stasi, aka the East German secret police?
An extremely privileged, white Russian serf girl listening as two landowners bargain over how much they want to pay for her.
This is an example of ridiculous mental gymnastics to maintain the “White people oppress POC!!!” paradigm.
Haha, ok. So this person (it’s a US blogger) has proclaimed Ashkenazim are not white. Alright, how about some…experts? Like real Ashkenazi Jewish people?
How about this other Jewish person’s opinion?
See? The “wtf Ashkenazim aren’t white they will slap you” person was American-splaining (yes, they are American) European race categories with clearly a US-centric understanding of race and subconscious failure to realise for Ashkenazi Jewish people, the definition of whiteness CAN FLUCTUATE in the US vs Europe. I understand that how Jewish people conceptualise identity can vary and may not fall neatly into “whiteness” or “non-white”. But the quarrel I have with that comment is because it’s obvious that person completely refused to countenance the notion that those people murdered in the Holocaust could be “white” because they don’t want to think about the complexity of racism around the world, they just want to perpetuate the narrative that racism globally is “white people oppress POC!!!” And that’s wrong, if you are gonna distort and step on other victims’ experiences for your own ends, no matter how noble your own cause is.
(Btw, MANY Ashkenazi Americans identify and do look “white” in the US.) Genetically, studies show they’ve enormous amounts of European ancestry because it seems European Jewish communities were formed from constant intermarriage with European women for CENTURIES, before they started to marry within the community. Just imagine how minimal their non-European heritage might be by then- 80% of Ashkenazim can trace their maternal line to prehistoric Europe. See why oversimplifying Nazi racism as “less-white” is kind of a wrong paradigm to understand it? And how it’s kind of wrong if you are so insistent on denying “white people” can face racism when we are not talking about neo-Nazis saying “white genocide!!!” about immigration, but real crimes against people?
2. “POC” cannot be racist. Sure. I’m laughing. I guess it wasn’t racism AT ALL when officers in the Imperial Japanese Army said they saw Chinese people as “subhuman”. When one of my family’s most awful experience of imperialism was under the Empire of Japan during World War 2. Where Chinese people were buried alive and experimented on. Young men executed en masse. Women forced to become “comfort women” (aka forced prostitution) to service the Imperial Japanese Army. So, my teenage grandmother bound her chest, cut her hair and rubbed her face with ash- and spent the entire time disguised as a boy in order that she wouldn’t be raped. All war crimes the Japanese government doesn’t want to apologise for even till today.
How about the fact that the people of a group who were victimised at one point can also have racist and discriminatory policies themselves?
So, saying “POC” cannot be racist (or oppressive in general) is offensive precisely because it lets governments who haven’t apologised off the hook. Because, hooray, all racism and oppression only comes from what is the US understanding of “white people” (European origin?) ! How about Ottoman Turkey’s genocide of 1 million+++ Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians? (Greeks! “White” victims at the hands of “non-white” people? I know, shocking, but it has happened. Also, it’s another debate whether Turkey can be so easily be considered “non-European”.) Hideous things like forced death marches to the desert. If what the white settlers did to the Native Americans is genocide, what the Ottoman Empire did to their Christian subjects sure as hell is genocide too. Like you know what, yes I’m glad Turkey criticises Israel for its policies towards Palestinians which indeed look like ethnic cleansing- but at the same time…I think, “what about you? When are YOU going to admit those 1 million people were murdered because you wanted to exterminate them?”
Wanna bet that anon earlier doesn’t know who this guy is? He’s Mehmet Talaat Pasha btw, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and chief architect of the Armenian genocide.
How about the “Death Railway”, where plenty of “white” POWS died working in conditions of near slavery building a railway line for the Empire of Japan, treated no better than the Asian labourers working alongside them?
That’s why the term “POC” doesn’t speak much of solidarity to me with that kind of history. Outside the US…it’s very often meaningless. In Europe, it’s already problematic because it obscures inter-European racism, and in countries where non-European people are a majority, some of the worst things we have suffered were by the hands of other “POC”. And that is exactly why the term “POC” and the entire “white people oppress POC” dichotomy SHOULD NOT be indiscriminately spilled all over non-US contexts and pre-US history.
3. If you’re an American person of colour, I’m going ask you, as a non-American and fellow non-white person, to think twice about trying to claim solidarity with all non-white people around the world and blaming all problems like modern capitalism and exploitation on “White supremacy”. Because that is not true, because that is a shameful abdication of recognising our moral culpability in other forms of oppression.
Like…US POCs, imo, are quite culpable in US foreign policy imperialism. How can they not be? Many do benefit from America’s political hegemony over the world even if within their country they’re less privileged than white Americans and still face discrimination. But vis a vis some poor person in another country about to be trampled by the boot of US foreign policy, they are privileged. Many US POCs serve in the US Army. The President is a person of colour.
One cannot claim equivalency in marginalisation with the Pakistani man whose family was killed in a mistargeted drone strike- because you are a US citizen. Just as I can’t claim I’m somehow as oppressed by capitalist exploitation as those Chinese villagers whose water supply got poisoned by factories making goods for the MNCs. Because although my great grandparents were poor Chinese who left China amidst the strife caused by the Opium Wars, I am not them. I had an infinitely more privileged upbringing, because I am a consumer in the developed world and actually on the other side- the side that in many ways enables oppression. My hands may be clean vis a vis white supremacy, but they ARE NOT when it comes to the way the developing world is exploited. Are wealthy Chinese businesspeople who mistreat their workers free of moral blame?
Are these people
as underprivileged or institutionally oppressed as these?
Are these two’s experiences, privilege and power
EXACTLY the same as these rural Kenyan kids- who are happy that they now have access to clean running water?
(Yes, Kenya and the African continent as a whole have made great strides. But it is a fact that these children face more challenges and have fewer opportunities and are much less privileged than most Americans.)
NO.
Just because we have been wronged by others in the past doesn’t mean we may not be hurting others now, and that we don’t have a responsibility to stop it.
It is one thing to talk about your own experiences and raise awareness about the injustices you face. That is great and should be supported. But it is another to step on other victims so your narrative of oppression is the loudest and drowns them all out. Oppression is not a contest, and we can talk about our experiences in SOLIDARITY with one another, recognising that throughout human history, racism and oppression has worn MANY faces around the world- not just white ones.
Lol no white peoplecannot face racism nice try though
Did you even read my post? I’m guessing not.
Racism is a dynamic between oppressor and oppressed, and yes there is no “reverse racism”, but there are places where other faultlines beyond skin colour exist. Which means people you like to homogenously lump together as “white” actually don’t see themselves uniformly. Just like the Japanese sure as hell didn’t see we Chinese as “yay Eastasians!” during WW2 when they massacred 300,000 people of my ethnic group in Nanking, or how the Rwandan Hutu extremists saw Tutsi as “cockroaches” even though they were both African, even though plenty of Hutu-Tutsi marriages had taken place before the genocide. Unlike the Americas, in Europe, where because a lot of people there are white, other stuff like language, culture, history and geopolitics actually often becomes used as an excuse to murder entire groups of people.
Clearly, you know more about what is or isn’t racism than the law enforcement, than people like the British police- who have dealt with everything from neo-Nazis to attacks on black African immigrants to attacks on Muslims. It’s not like they have the statistics to know there is systemic racism against Poles to arrive at this conclusion or something. It’s not like they’ve had responded to numerous reports of anti-Polish graffiti. It’s not like they know recently, a man got beaten up by 15 people outside a London pub, who yelled “go back to Poland!”
Clearly, what the Greeks experienced at the hands of the Ottoman Empire- forced death marches, massacres, summary executions, forced removal from their lands and destruction of the Christian religious symbols was not racism at all. Because, their magical white skin protects them from experiencing racism, and the fact that they were followers of a minority religion in an Islamic country and a minority ethnic group without much institutional power is totally irrelevant.
Clearly, this Czech Jewish girl, with blonde hair and fair skin, must definitely be a POC since she was murdered in the Holocaust. Her name is Hana Brady, btw. Unless you want to say the Holocaust wasn’t about racism, about Nazi Aryanism. Because racism is only the US flavour of white vs POC, because other forms like Aryanism don’t exist. Nevermind how often the Nazis called Jewish people “vermin” and “subhuman” and an “inferior race” and the Holocaust a “purification” of Germany.
Clearly, white people cannot face racism even though the Holocaust is an internationally-recognised genocide. Because you say so. Or are European Jewish people all “POC”? Hmm? This is amazing. I’m glad the most major genocide in the 20th century wasn’t about racism after all. Humans aren’t so bad after all!
You may also want to share your amazing findings with historians, human rights lawyers and legal scholars regarding the way the Nazis deliberately starved and abused Soviet POWsto the extent 60% died in custody, compared to less than 5% for British and Americans. Cos, y’know, they think it is genocide. Cos historians know about Generalplan Ost, and how the Nazis elaborated how they intended to exterminate Eastern Europe of Slavic people to increase German living space.
Or alternatively, you may wanna tell these Russian soldiers that you have just discovered they are not white after all, that they are POC, since racism cannot happen to white people.
Or you can do the easy thing which is to take off your American-centric lens, realise there is a whole different world outside the US and Canada, and recognise that racial Othering and discrimination doesn’t always function based on skin colour differences.
This is absolutely perfect. Most of tumblr is fixated on the specific race relations of the US which they then apply to everyone everywhere regardless of fact or how those nations are
Shit,it’s blatant in daily life when I have to explain to people exactly why the assumption of nationality of East Asians can be horrendously offensive and messy. I have Chinese ancestry, I have learned some Japanese. In order to practice, I used Japanese in a Japanese restaurant. The proprietor was all smiles until upon her asking if my features were from a Japanese ancestor, I replied no, actually I’m Chinese. She immediately flipped to icy and rude.
My European ancestry is mostly Polish and none of the came to America until the mid 1930’s, yet I have had fun chats about white responsibility for slavery when my family had no involvement. (Except on the Jamaican side which uh…well they obviously weren’t the oppressors there.)
The American experience of race and oppression is utterly alien in other places.
Jews being POC is one of tumblr’s most damaging inventions because it is turning the Holocaust, which is a “european” based atrocity, because it dealed with a European background that involves religion, sociability, and European based prejudices (basically, Jews had been discriminated in European societies long before any definitions of whiteness came along - So OBVIOUSLY the problem goes much farther than that). And people turn it into a white kills POC dicothomy to fit IN AN AMERICAN PARADIGME OF OPPRESSION. Do you see how wrong this is? You’re appropriating the suffering of those people to fit into your society although it’s not the same at all. Do you people not understand that the world doesn’t function according to your society? That there was for ages actually slavery and division between black people and white people in the US and that is something that the European countries never experienced in a large scale? Even the countries that had colonies enforced those systems back in the colonies. For instance, Portugal was the first country to actually abolish slavery in their Continental territory in the 18th century. You know why? BECAUSE IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE. There were really no numbers of significant slaves in Continental Portugal, most people who lived in CP never had to deal with that reality. So the European society in this case (not to mention Asia, which I won’t speak of because I don’t know) is completely different from the basis on which the American society was formed. Therefore, the prejudices are going to be different. It’s really not DIFFICULT.
As a non-American, I’m pretty damn tired of American-splaining. >___>
Thank you.
I would also like to point out how Russia wrecked havoc on Eastern Europe (which was definitely white). Labor camps and gulags. Purging the brightest minds, you name it. Here’s but one country’s example. The effects of it can still be felt now. But nobody talks about it, of course.
Long post but well worth a read, very well put. America needs to stop putting its model of racial inequality onto Europe - we are completely different.
