Just addressing this point - it's very easy to act objective and be calm and composed when the implications aren't "I am at risk of being shot in the street by the people supposed to protect me" for you.
Ultimately though, my question is this (which isn't really addressed by your post) - regardless of whether or not you do have fear of being harmed because of an unstoppable force doesn't mean that that fear is justified, especially when the problems associated with that fear could be rooted in other things. Even if the fear is true and genuine to those who feel it, that doesn't explain where the root of the problem is. And you cannot be expected to remotely approach that problem if you aren't willing to consider all possibilities. Yes, the fear of being killed for being black can be very real to the victim, but that won't stop the problem if this is publicized and it turns out the problem is an issue with crime rates in the area or financial woes, and racism stems from those issues itself.
It would be kind of like saying that I can't think of things logically regarding my own mental issues as I approach a therapist, because I'm upset about them. We all analyze things very differently, I am simply a very logical and matter-of-fact individual. That does not imply that I'm incapable of empathy and that very suggestion shows that you have little interest outside of loading your words with guilt into my mouth.
Being able to detach oneself enough to have a calm debate is a privilege. It's a tale as old as civil rights itself, people who are subject to systematic oppression being told that they're making the privileged feel uncomfortable with their anger and told to be quiet and listen."
So I ask you for a second to sit down and perhaps ask yourself.
What makes me so privileged?
What makes me sound like I'm plugging my ears and say, "lalala I'm not listening"?
You don't know my history, my life, my challenges. It's very easy to say, "well, you're white, so you have white privilege", but
privilege ultimately is non-quantifiable. I face issues due to a wide range of issues. We can discuss all day about how some of my problems are continually erased because I have supposed "white privilege", levels of oppression . We can talk about how the absolutely atrocious state of how disabled individuals are treated in this country, levels that most able-bodied black people cannot even begin to imagine. We can talk about the number of people who, while I was borderline suicidal, told me about how horrible of a person I was for holding the opinion of "rioting is bad and Ferguson is a tragedy", even some telling me to kill myself. We could go on all day about how I have secrets that could make me lose my job and my possibility of ever getting a new one, we could go on all day about how said secrets could ruin my life and lock me into a corner for the rest of my life because people simply don't understand.
Perhaps because of my experiences I realize that greater problems exist. Perhaps because of my experiences that I analyze things in a different perspective. I don't sit in an armchair and try to take measurements, unlike many people in this thread. I have gone to scary ass places in the world, listened to those who lived there, learned about the experiences of others,
lived experiences,
faced hatred, faced bigotry, faced shame and disgust for no more than who I was, to realize that society's problem against certain individuals is not one that lies solely in race, but a grandiose multitude of factors that must all be considered. I do not sit on an armchair and look out at the world while listening to the television,
I interact with it 5 out of the 7 days in every week. And that's just the race part! Some bits I deal with every day!
It's not like I don't face problems. I face problems that some people may think are insurmountable. I have faced my fair level of active oppression both from public school districts, the area I grew up around, and the general public my entire life. Simply because you don't believe it exists because I'm white doesn't mean I've never faced it. Just because you feel like I've never been in a situation where I thought that my life was at risk because of the way that I present myself doesn't mean that I never had been in that situation.
And that's where a big problem in this entire issue lies. People only see a few traits and automatically try to categorize them on a "privilege scale" of sorts, and try to sort them in a hierarchy of oppression. But oppression doesn't work that way. Victimization can target anyone, at any time, regardless of race, gender, age or prosperity. Life is an unkind beast who is based in cruelty and unfairness. True equality doesn't start until you target what truly is unfair in your life. Not simply finding the easy way out but truly analyzing all possibilities and interpreting all possible routes. Yes, racism can be one, but so can income, so can crime rates in that area, so can the officer's fear or mental state, so can even the people he was around at the time. All of these things could have influenced actions on both ends.
Do you believe that my life has never felt threatened by the individuals who were supposed to protect me? How do you know this as a fact? Perhaps not the police, but I have felt that my well being and my future were on the line not only due to society but even because of my parents due to fears of mental instability because of a wide range of individual problems?
Is that somehow "not feeling safe by the people who are supposed to protect me"? Can you please dare explain to me how somehow being threatened with being locked up eternally for mental issues beyond my control is somehow any more desirable of a fate than being shot on the street for being black? Can you please dare explain how I am supposed to erase these problems from my entity just like he is supposed to shed his skin colour, as you appear to boil my argument down to?
But how can you expect to "check someone's privilege" when a wide variety of issues that can change where your privilege truly lies exists? Stevie Wonder is a black blind man who is far more "privileged" than most people on this forum will be in their lifetimes - but if we just look at the cover, we would think he would be one of the most oppressed individuals in society. The inverse is true with white families who suffer from financial instability, internal unrest, domestic abuse. If both Stevie Wonder and that poor white family had children, who had no option into what world they were raised in, which child should be told to "check their privilege"?
Would those children even truly be capable of being compared?
This doesn't even address the fact that people who did indeed face daily oppression, such as Martin Luther King Jr (although he got assassinated,
so that means he sucked at his activism apparently), were able to keep "calm and detatched" despite the very blatant racial tension that he faced. He was able to be extremely peaceful, despite the fact that people tried to (and succeeded at) killing him, was thrown in jail and faced levels of oppression that people these days can barely even imagine. It's kind of a disservice to assume that those who are observing things from a different perspective are somehow incapable of empathizing with those who are dealing with it in person, especially to those who do deal with these issues and witness them every day from a personal perspective. Do you believe that MLK just assumed that everything was because of race, or do you think he analyzed his situation for all possibilities before considering it? Because considering his logical and well thought out appeals, I think he really did think about things instead of reacting on a hair trigger knee jerk reaction.
And sometimes, yes, bigotry is the answer to the question. But not always. And to give yourself a glass slipper that seems to fit the foot may seem like a good idea, but if there are other problems, other inaccuracies, other possibilities you will ultimately find yourself in a world of hurt. I have stared in the face of bigotry many times at my life but I never just assumed it at first, because maybe there are other possibilities that are contributing to the problem, and maybe even
produce the bigotry in question.
If there's any lesson I can tell you, I learned something precious from a man who faced 100 times more challenges than me, and pretty much most people on this forum for that matter. My blind ex boyfriend taught me that it's not the number of problems that you have to face, but how you deal with them, and how you push through life. Unlike most black people, he will likely be declined from most jobs, because black people don't have to worry about lazy software developers forgetting to use alt tags, or employers automatically assuming that you have no employ-ability despite having the degrees to prove it. Most black people will never have to deal with the daily ridicule and social aversion to his condition. Most black people will never have to deal with the inability to integrate himself into society - not because he's unwilling, which is true with particular minorities - but because society is truly unwilling.
But he taught me that my problems were real. That I didn't need to sit down and listen and shut my mouth, that we could both talk about our problems. Yes, he encountered many more challenges than I ever did, but not at one point did he ever tell me that I should stop talking, and that my problems weren't real. We took care of each other. We didn't see "oh poor oppressed baby", we saw human beings who faced problems and inequality. Equality isn't about putting people's problems on a hierarchy, it's about doing the exact opposite, and investigating the root cause of problems - not just the most obvious, blatant or apparent, because sometimes those issues have deeper roots in oft ignored causes.
But let's be frank here. If you think that I have a calm approach to my issues, then you clearly don't know me very well. I guess though we can continue to ignore these problems to continue to feed our race narratives and assume that white people are completely incapable of empathy with a situation of feeling unsafe and having their well being threatened.
So why don't you sit down and stop telling people who you automatically assume are more privileged than you because of one or two traits that you happen to know about them and realize that the world isn't as one dimensional as black and white. Because ultimately, if that's what you care about, then you do nothing but continue to erase the issues of others, by prioritizing what you personally feel affects people more. You're just as bad as the people who say that "white people deserve more attention", if you're claiming that somehow I am incapable of feeling the feelings that black people feel, because let me tell you something - I don't know every experience in the world, but
you are one brave soul to dare tell me that "I've never felt like my well being has ever been threatened and that I can 'think logically and detatched from a situation'" because you perceive that I have never encountered that level of hardship in my life.
The sister to your "you're discounting your opinion if you're too mad when you say it!" is almost always "well you're not that angry so it can't be that big a deal so let's keep the status quo.
And yet you continue to feed into the status quo (along with many others in this thread) by not approaching other possibilities. Perhaps my point was that there are other issues underneath those that exist and not everything is just a matter of race but a multitude of various conditions that are far more workable than simply racial bigotry.
Ultimately if we look at the situation, the accusation of simply "he's racist" is weak in of itself. Yes, there are people out there who want to purge out black people (just like how there are people who want to purge out white people, or any race for that matter). However, these people are not common in society, and are openly shunned by most people (outside of specific sects). Perhaps the problem was fueled by racism, but also by a multitude of other problems. Perhaps the problem was fueled by the fact that black people in urban areas tend to be more likely to suffer from poverty, which means that more will turn to crime, which consequentially puts them at the end of the police officer. What is to say that wasn't the problem in of itself? These problems go hand in hand but just highlighting the racism isn't going to go and erase the source of the problem.
What if the problem is that which lies in other causes? Then ultimately that means that blaming everything on racism is moot, and has toxic effects as well. You ultimately
create racism by telling people that they're automatically racist. Again, with my Detroit example, people use the fact that 1) Detroit has been on a downward spiral, 2) Detroit has been run by mainly black individuals for 40 years and 3) black people in Detroit blame white people for a gross majority of their problems, which leads to white people holding animosity towards many black people because of how they are treated. How can you expect people to possibly even try to assist you if you are constantly poisoning their well and telling them how horrible they are, even when they have not had a hand in actively oppressing you in almost 40 years in most cases? This doesn't even mention that the initial problem, which may not be rooted in racism,
is never addressed.
Another example is that I know coworkers who have told me that "men are inherently misogynistic and can never erase their misogyny". She claimed that these things were restricting her job title and recognition in the company. While it could be true that these issues are rooted in misogynistic causes, by assigning "misogyny" with little investigation into the subject, not only do you forgo other possibilities (such as a mistake or seniority) but you divide yourself among others. What if the men of the office heard that? They may start to build stereotypes around people who act like that woman and even extend to people who don't genuinely believe that. In a sense, she creates misogyny by claiming misogyny without exploring other avenues. It is true that she feels like her well being in some way is at risk because she feels like she cannot make the same accomplishments that a man can make and is inherently limited by sexism. But if that isn't true, then you ultimately limit yourself in the belief that sexism is the problem, by turning a blind eye to other possibilities.
Apparently though, facing oppression means that thinking logically about your problems is not an option and that emotional rhetoric is just as viable as logical, even if evidence may suggest other problems.
Continue to wear your blinders and forget that other possibilities exist. I'll be waiting for when you decide to take them off.
