Translation: “Hello, I have no understanding of systemic racism and the structural inequalities that cause people of color to have less opportunities to tell their stories. I believe that becoming an author is easy and definitely not something that favors the more economically advantaged, who have more time and leisure to pursue their dreams and are also overwhelmingly white because of racist historical policies. I think books magically appear on bookshelves or in people’s recommendations solely by their own merit instead of having to pass through an industry full of mostly white gatekeepers who put a market value on each aspiring author’s manuscript by judging it through their white middle class lens. I don’t see race because I delight in my own ignorance!”
I’ve noticed over the years that when a white person kills a lot of people with the aid of guns, we are told that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Usually, the conversation then pivots away from guns to the epidemic of mental health issues in America. In these situations, the gun rights advocates’ response to gun violence often is not punitive, but rather positively identifying a public health issue that contributes to the violence. This demonstrates that gun rights advocates are capable of identifying a societal problem that contributes to mass violence and proposing a solution which neither criminalizes nor punishes communities for gun violence.
Relatedly–because these conversations sometimes shift to so-called “black-on-black” crime and gun violence–we see a very different reaction when black people commit gun violence in segregated cities. Instead of identifying the deeper societal wounds (centuries-long intergenerational trauma, systemic racism, poverty, lack of services and opportunity, poor wages, etc.) and offering effective sympathetic solutions (investing in communities, providing more services, regionalizing taxation, dare I say reparations) as we have established they can, many of those same gun rights advocates offer different, punitive solutions: namely more police, more surveillance, and more jails.
In the former scenario, guns aren’t the issue, communities aren’t the issue, gun culture isn’t the issue, but–with sympathy and thoughts and prayers–mental health is the issue we should focus on. As a society, it is our problem to solve, even if it never gets solved. In the latter case, guns are an issue, minority communities and “black culture” are issues, and lacking sympathy, “cracking down” on violence is the issue we should focus on. As a society, it is not our problem; it is “their” problem to solve in the city, and if anyone tries to take funds away from police, we will work hard to get the police their funding back, or get them even more. In other words, action actually gets taken in the second scenario.
Why did I want to share this perspective? Especially for our fellow Americans who struggle to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism, I hope that these two scenarios shed light on its existence and function: how it can permeate conversations and mindsets, political talking points, how we see fellow Americans, what policy solutions are proposed in different situations, who is seen as sympathetic, who is responsible for resolving societal problems, and who is most likely to feel the force of state violence and who gets exceptions made for them. You, kind reader, may not be a racist, and all gun rights activists may not be racists, but it is important to acknowledge that racists and systemic racism play very real and very detrimental roles in our politics, policy, and discourse. And it never hurts to use our privilege to point it out. Short of doing nothing, it’s literally the least we can do.
what really fucking bothers me in conversations about racism and saying that some work has racist elements people always counter with “I don’t think the author had deliberate racist ideology in mind” cause it’s like that doesn’t fucking matter. it doesn’t have to be deliberate to be racist. most people don’t go hee hee hoo hoo I’m gonna put racist things in this. everyone was raised in a racist society and covert racism exists and yes needs to be examined in ourselves and everywhere and yes even in works you like author “deliberate” intent or no
this applies to other forms of bigotry too. listen to the voices of those who have to live under systemic oppression
I’m going to say this and then run away from Tumblr as fast as I can while my account gets put through the grinder but I’m getting really really really tired of seeing stuff boiled down to “white people bad”.
And before you get started I Get why this happens and why people say these things. I don’t even necessarily disagree. I’m just a little burnt out about hearing how horrible, awful, evil, and irredeemable white people are and how they need to be eradicated. As someone who’s white (or at least white presenting and lives a white experience) I’m not going to pretend like I LOVE hearing my friends talk about how much they hate white people. I get it. I’m not going to tell them to stop, my feelings don’t matter more than theirs, but gosh do I wish they wouldn’t say those things? Of course.
It’s just, I KNOW, why people feel that way. Hell, I feel that way when I speak to my family who still lives on our tribe’s reservation, but even despite all that I refuse to agree that turning hate speech towards white people is the best we can do for moving the conversation forward.
As a woman of color, I’m going to tell you right here that I understand where you’re coming from and I appreciate your honesty.
The truth is, there are good and bad people in every race, every ethnicity. I’ve run into my fair share of white people who are totally amazing (like my white friends whom I love with my heart and soul) and BIPOC who are downright awful (like the radfems of color). My Chinese mother is colorist, antiblack, homophobic, and ableist, and she is as much a product of her environment as anyone else.
The fact is, we all got stuff to unpack and things to deconstruct. None of us are islands. We are all products of our environments and we all grew up exposed to everything that comes with a capitalist society. None of us are free from those influences. Unless you’ve spent your whole life living in a cave off the grid, you’re not free from them.
What needs to be done is we all need to do the work. We all got shit to heal. We all got responsibilities to take, and accountabilities to hold ourselves to. And we need to keep doing these things, and then keep doing these things.
