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Ways to help end racism, also me awkwardly trying to state some thoughts
This is quite excellent: I Can Fix It! by damali ayo. It's 5 things that individual people can do in their day to day lives to help end racism. Five things for white people, five things for people of color. Everything is explained at length, further resources are given, it's easy to understand. I highly, highly recommend it.
White people on my flist who don't normally think seriously about racism and anti-racism, seriously, if you consider me a friend at all, I beg you to please check this out (if you do think about it, I assume you don't need to be begged to click the link or have already seen it!). I would like to think that the people that I consider friends at least care enough to take the very, very easy first step of just checking the link out. Even if you don't read the rest of this entry! The first three steps are really easy to undertake and can be done while you do your normal life! The last two I'm still working on. It's really nice and satisfying to see these things phrased as "these are things that you can do that will help."
This also, for the record, definitely jives with what I've come across in my (somewhat) more extensive reading on the subject. If you want further reading, try A Guide to Racism 101 for Clueless White People. That might actually work better as initial reading, but I love the positive feel of the pdf, which I think makes it a nice, non-threatening starting point. In any case, neither the article nor the pdf want to make you feel bad about being a white person.
However, if you feel uncomfortable at any point, this probably means you're doing it right. That's not a sign to back away or reject something - embrace the discomfort! Also, if something that an anti-racist writer says seems wrong, try assuming that it's right. This happens to me all the time in my personal education. Someone that I respect who's writing seriously about race will say soemthing that might initially seem hateful or wrong, and I have to try to reverse my position and try to evaluate their statement while believing all their assumptions and perspectives to be valid and correct, and I end up thinking differently about it. (This is a slightly different way of phrasing some stuff in the "Listen" section of the pdf. I just wanted to point out another pitfall, and to warn people that it doesn't always feel like a warm fuzzy "yay! I'm becoming a better person!")
I'm trying to say something pretty simple about ethnicity vs race, but I'm still nervous about my ability to talk about this stuff coherently and without saying something stupid. I will try, though! I just came across some comments today where white people hadn't done step 1 - "admit that you have a race," and were saying stuff like "To me, the fact that I'm Lithuanian and German and Polish is so much more a part of my identity than the fact that I'm white." I remember thinking something very similar, in my youth (so, 4 years ago) and I thought at the time that thinking about people in terms of their ethnicity rather than their race was better, less racist, because ethnicity implies culture and race is based on skin color. It's not, you know, the worst way to think about the world, and there are definitely situations where the nuanced view is far more meaningful. But it's pretty white privilegey to firmly prioritize ethnicity over race as an identity marker, since we're the only ones who can ignore our race. (We're also the ones who forcibly separated people from their culture and defined them solely by their race!)
And when you say stuff like that in a discussion of race you're kind of being a turd, because the implication is "People who define themselves as their race instead of their ethnicity are being racist and are just determined to view things in terms of race." (I have seen this argument articulated in as many words, too.) Basically in minimizing race as an identity factor, ideas like this fail to recognize how much people who aren't the dominant race have to deal with race on a daily basis, while the dominant race gets to ignore it.
This is like the "colorblind is better" mistake, because only white people get to do it. "Stop defining yourselves by your race, minorities! Stop seeing everything in terms of race! I didn't think about race all day today, why couldn't you!" Hopefully it is clear why this is a turdbuckety thing to do.
There are some things in racism and feminism, where I know that a certain statement or action is wrong, and I kind of know why it's wrong, but I can't articulate it well enough to argue convincingly about it. When I argue about things I always want to be able to go all the way to the logical core. Not just "that's bad because it's sexist," but to be able to explain why it's sexist, the potential negative consequences of the sexism, etc. I don't know where I'm going with this except that it's very difficult. Smarter people can do it well, but I need sources and a lot of sources don't go into everything like they're convincing a total non-believer, but rather assume that the people they're speaking to are more or less on the same patch of ground as they are. A lot of blogs are more like "LOOK AT THIS HORRIBLE THING," and I'm like "OH GOD THAT'S HORRIBLE!" but I can't fully articulate all the negative consequences.
White people on my flist who don't normally think seriously about racism and anti-racism, seriously, if you consider me a friend at all, I beg you to please check this out (if you do think about it, I assume you don't need to be begged to click the link or have already seen it!). I would like to think that the people that I consider friends at least care enough to take the very, very easy first step of just checking the link out. Even if you don't read the rest of this entry! The first three steps are really easy to undertake and can be done while you do your normal life! The last two I'm still working on. It's really nice and satisfying to see these things phrased as "these are things that you can do that will help."
This also, for the record, definitely jives with what I've come across in my (somewhat) more extensive reading on the subject. If you want further reading, try A Guide to Racism 101 for Clueless White People. That might actually work better as initial reading, but I love the positive feel of the pdf, which I think makes it a nice, non-threatening starting point. In any case, neither the article nor the pdf want to make you feel bad about being a white person.
However, if you feel uncomfortable at any point, this probably means you're doing it right. That's not a sign to back away or reject something - embrace the discomfort! Also, if something that an anti-racist writer says seems wrong, try assuming that it's right. This happens to me all the time in my personal education. Someone that I respect who's writing seriously about race will say soemthing that might initially seem hateful or wrong, and I have to try to reverse my position and try to evaluate their statement while believing all their assumptions and perspectives to be valid and correct, and I end up thinking differently about it. (This is a slightly different way of phrasing some stuff in the "Listen" section of the pdf. I just wanted to point out another pitfall, and to warn people that it doesn't always feel like a warm fuzzy "yay! I'm becoming a better person!")
I'm trying to say something pretty simple about ethnicity vs race, but I'm still nervous about my ability to talk about this stuff coherently and without saying something stupid. I will try, though! I just came across some comments today where white people hadn't done step 1 - "admit that you have a race," and were saying stuff like "To me, the fact that I'm Lithuanian and German and Polish is so much more a part of my identity than the fact that I'm white." I remember thinking something very similar, in my youth (so, 4 years ago) and I thought at the time that thinking about people in terms of their ethnicity rather than their race was better, less racist, because ethnicity implies culture and race is based on skin color. It's not, you know, the worst way to think about the world, and there are definitely situations where the nuanced view is far more meaningful. But it's pretty white privilegey to firmly prioritize ethnicity over race as an identity marker, since we're the only ones who can ignore our race. (We're also the ones who forcibly separated people from their culture and defined them solely by their race!)
And when you say stuff like that in a discussion of race you're kind of being a turd, because the implication is "People who define themselves as their race instead of their ethnicity are being racist and are just determined to view things in terms of race." (I have seen this argument articulated in as many words, too.) Basically in minimizing race as an identity factor, ideas like this fail to recognize how much people who aren't the dominant race have to deal with race on a daily basis, while the dominant race gets to ignore it.
This is like the "colorblind is better" mistake, because only white people get to do it. "Stop defining yourselves by your race, minorities! Stop seeing everything in terms of race! I didn't think about race all day today, why couldn't you!" Hopefully it is clear why this is a turdbuckety thing to do.
There are some things in racism and feminism, where I know that a certain statement or action is wrong, and I kind of know why it's wrong, but I can't articulate it well enough to argue convincingly about it. When I argue about things I always want to be able to go all the way to the logical core. Not just "that's bad because it's sexist," but to be able to explain why it's sexist, the potential negative consequences of the sexism, etc. I don't know where I'm going with this except that it's very difficult. Smarter people can do it well, but I need sources and a lot of sources don't go into everything like they're convincing a total non-believer, but rather assume that the people they're speaking to are more or less on the same patch of ground as they are. A lot of blogs are more like "LOOK AT THIS HORRIBLE THING," and I'm like "OH GOD THAT'S HORRIBLE!" but I can't fully articulate all the negative consequences.