Re: Sad to read this
CRT is not trying to make white people feel guilty for being white. I cannot stress that strongly enough. It is not my fault for being a white dude, any more than it's anyone else's for being what they are. Nobody should have to apologize for what they are.
CRT, to my understanding, doesn't so much teach that we're all racists if we're white. It teaches us that we all experience white privilege, and that as a result of this, we've probably all been at least passively complicit in racism, particularly the systemic kind, in our lives. This is nothing to feel guilty about on an individual level, but it -is something to learn from.
Rather than pretending everything is okay, we need to respect the fact that it isn't.
Rather than saying, "Oh, well that's never happened to me before, so I don't get what the big deal is", maybe it's better to say, "Wow, I can't believe that happened to you. How can we make this better?"
It is not our job to bear centuries of guilt for the awful things our predecessors did. But it is absolutely our responsibility to fix what they fucked up, to undo what they wove deep into white consciousness. And some of that means admitting that you've benefited from a system meant to prop you up when maybe you shouldn't have. Some of that means maybe you've stepped on toes without meaning to. Some of it means being willing to listen first, instead of trying to dominate the conversation. For many of us, we grew up in a position which allowed us to dominate conversations, and it happened so naturally that it feels weird not to do it, or feels like we're being targeted when we're asked to stop it. I get that. It's okay to feel cut adrift a bit, to suddenly be told that a bunch of what you thought you knew has holes in it. If that makes you a bit unsettled, even a bit defensive, that's understandable. I can tell you, as a white man, it's rocked me several times, and I haven't always dealt with it so gracefully. I've been resistant more times than not.
But what really blew the doors off it for me was finally coming to understand that while these systems weren't my fault, and while the actions of others aren't my fault, my own complicitude is something I have at least some control of. And if I control it, I own it. And that also means owning the mistakes that come along with it.
White fragility is essentially the phenomenon where whites will absolutely flip out and insist they can't possibly be racist, when confronted with this sort of info. Banning CRT is the ultimate fragile white act, because it's trying to pretend that real problems don't exist.
So, just in case we aren't clear: I am not advocating that non-whites spit on us, hurt us or otherwise denigrate us because we're white. That isn't what we're talking about. But it does mean it's okay if they call us out for being idiots, or for being insensitive. It does mean it isn't their sole responsibility to teach us. It does mean that when we fuck up, it's on us to fix it. It does mean that the first step is ownership, both the good and bad aspects. It does mean that a lot of stuff woven deeply into society has to be dismantled, because like it or not, it's propping up racism. There's simply too much evidence to ignore.
Never let anyone call you a bad person purely because of the colour of your skin. But by the same token, always be willing to listen if someone of a different race from you tells you that you've made a mistake. Maybe you'll agree, maybe you won't, but actually stop and listen, instead of just assuming you can't possibly be racist in any way.
Remember, you can be racist by accident, or without knowing it. That's a lot better than the people who mean it, but it's still not great. Ideally we want to get rid of racial barriers across the board, right? CRT would help us do that, because it teaches that all races, all manner of people, are equal and deserving of respect. It teaches that we aren't done fixing our mistakes. It teaches that we are still born into privilege in a broken system that is going to take awhile to set right. And it teaches that we have to own that, all the way down, before we can make any meaningful strides toward fixing it.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
