Writing
Can It Be Insincere for White People to Focus on Race and Racism?
Have you ever heard the saying, "When pointing a finger, three fingers are pointing back at you"? A decade ago, white people were reticent in acknowledging it; however, today, we've become slightly more comfortable pointing the finger at racism. We’ve also grown comfortable pointing at the most obvious forms of racism, like prejudiced thoughts, micro aggressions, and police violence. And we certainly love pointing out racism when it’s abstract: as something that lives outside of ourselves and doesn’t implicate us personally. Still, as we point our index finger outward and at racism, three fingers remain pointing back at us.
Three Words that White-Latinx/e Need to Say "No" To and Stop Gentrifying
Though it's unclear when we adopted the term "white-passing," white-Latine have nonetheless gentrified the concept. The word was meant to capture the experience of Black people, not bilingual white people who speak Spanish. As the brilliant scholar @gfx_prints once reminded her Instagram followers, “Speaking Spanish does not make you a person of color.” The history of "passing" has primarily focused on what was gained but ironically, white-Latine use it to demonstrate what is lost.
How White People Promote the Legacy of Minstrel Shows By Using AAVE
I know this will be a tough pill to swallow, so resist the urge to “cancel” me, white people. We need to talk about one of the ways anti-Blackness casually manifests itself, and that’s through our use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). We’ve become too comfortable in our appropriation of AAVE and ignorantly take its rich history for granted.
Why do White Children Whisper “Black People”
Since white supremacy is the default of our U.S. American society and racism a by-product, it is no surprise that white children grow up into adulthood with (often) unchallenged racial biases. One way the racial prejudice of white children manifests is by perniciously whispering "Black people" in conversation. One implication is that Blackness is something that we need to be quiet about because it's inherently bad—like we learn at a young age to not say ‘bad words,’ like b**ch, sh*t, or the ‘F’ word.
White People, We Need to Implicate Ourselves in Racism Directly.
White people (of all ethnicities), it's time to be honest; it's been time. It’s time to stop playing games; It's time to address our internalized anti-Black sentiment, and it's time to start implicating ourselves in racism.
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison