Vigilant Walrus
Member
That's not the same as racism though. Surely racism is actively harming POC?
And before you say privilige. There are lot of homeless white people, shit out of luck. Are they racist? Reaping the benefits of white privilige?
That is the idea, I'm afraid. It's this opression olympic thing, where a white person is always better of. A white homeless man is better of than a black homeless man. A white man with cancer is better of than a black man with cancer.
It's to use a measurement stick through an American lens, imploy and repeat the same phrases; Like somehow a white man with cancer or a white homeless man is going to sit there and reflect on that someone else, somewhere else is in a worse spot than they are.
As a tentative means to make white people more aware of their advantages, it is one of the most counter productive and tone deaf labels there is. Nobody who is white and suffering, is going to have the stamina to sit there and go "geez, I might have cancer, but it could be worse. I could have been born a minority with cancer".
You perceive your own life in a vacuum, because its the only first hand experience you have, and you rightly get pissed off when others try to tell you to readjust what you're going through just because someone else is worse off.
I don't for a second buy that minorities in Americans wouldn't be just as annoyed if someone told them to pipe it down and appreciate their American privilege because the benefits of being American still vastly outstrip the QOL many places on earth.
You're simply not going to be open that as some sort of "pipe it down minorities. Someone else, somewhere else are much worse than you. appreciate your privilege".
Bad communication aside, it's of course true. Whites do have all the benefits in the western world, and having a honest conversation about how to make white people not be on the defensive, so they can open their minds to their advantages, would be interesting. But rarely do I see people who are actually interested in what changes people here on GAF.
What I see most is that a lot of people are just attached to the bandwagon condemnation for the purpose of getting an outlet- Which doesn't solve anything. It just makes white people more disenfranchised and upset, and then the response is some other term like "white fragility" and the effect just becomes more and more entrenched and toxic.
You don't make people more open to new ideas or being appreciative, by making them angry and defensive. It's a bad emotional response to try and change the behavior of someone else.
If you wanted to change the opinion of a family member, a friend or a spouse, do you think you most successfully do that by accusing and summarizing their worth based on the external appearance and genetics? That shit will backfire, and nobody is going to be open to change through being talked to like that.