three copper hearts

http://www.xojane.com/issues/sometimes-i-worry-boston-making-me-racist

This site is really hit-and-miss. Sometimes it’s just your typical makeup-pushing, celebrity-worshiping, brandname-idolizing “women’s magazine”. But sometimes articles like this come along and articulate something important.

“Unfortunately, I participate in racism to an extent simply because I exist in a culture in which racism is an institutionalized fact. You’ll notice this is not the same as calling individual people “racist” — the inimitable Jay Smooth has the final word on how to constructively call out individual behavior — but it is rather a way of acknowledging that social forces beyond any one person’s control are constantly in play, every day of our lives, and some of those forces are racist.”

I’m not sure I agree with her solution to her racism is to spend more time in multi-racial neighborhoods—although maybe that’s a good start. But I’m very happy with some of the things said in this article. The bottom line I came away with was If you are a white person in the United States (and in other places) you participate in racism daily. Even if you are somehow completely pure of racist thoughts yourself, the society we live in caters to you because of your whiteness and it is your responsibility to do all you can to educate yourself and your peers on these matters and to constantly challenge the structural racism that surrounds us.

Even though I’ve heard this all before it honestly helps for me to hear it once again from a white person struggling with the same questions I have been struggling with for a while. It’s hard for me to talk about race because I’m sure I’m going to say something wrong or overstep some boundaries or accidentally evoke something harmful I hadn’t meant to. I need to keep educating myself and never stop questioning my privileges and biases. This article helped, also in its brief look at how spaces themselves can be racist. Hmm.