"Proud to be White," Said the Racist.

YEPPPPPP. 

 

I consider myself very liberal politically. But, I consider myself a REAL liberal in that I'm accepting of other people's (differing) viewpoints. You can keep your gun (just register it / apply for it) and I get if you're not 100% on board with welfare after seeing so many people abuse the system, whatever. 

However, I want to take a second to respond to something I saw posted on Instagram yesterday. I've been thinking about it since I saw it, and I'm so exhausted and I have so many things to do and noone even reads my blogs (but hiiii if you do!) but I just feel so passionately about race-related issues that I have to put my two cents in. 

let's not even get into the eyes drawn on the Asian man ... that's a whole other blog post

On my old blog I talked about how I become so mad that people of color are rarely cast in big movies (it's getting better, but still not there. SO HAPPY that Annie is black!) and in TV shows (e.g. How I Met Your Mother ? Friends? We couldn't have any of the friends that were not white? 

Anyways. 

I also have friends who say things like "Yeah but if we had White Entertainment Television, that'd be considered racist" or "Why don't we have White History Month? It's such a double standard." And I might have asked the same questions once upon a time, but this is what it boils down to: 

You're "racist" if you are proud of being White because "White" isn't a culture. What has white culture done that hasn't sucked? When people talk about "White" culture what is the first thing you think about? White power. KKK. If you want to be proud of something you're proud that you're Irish, or Italian or English - not that you're white. In my humble opinion, if you are proud to be white then all you're saying is that you're proud your skin color is white [because that means it's not black (or any other non-white color)] because the white skin color is the best skin color and better than all the others. On the other hand, if your proud to be black, it's because you're proud of your skin color - YES! - because for how many years were black people taught that there was something to be ashamed of because of the color of their skin - but more than that, you're proud of what the Black Culture has done in this country and you're proud to be a part of that.

Secondly, as if it even needs to be said, there doesn't need to be a WET channel or White History Month because 90% of the channels on TV are all white, all the time (if not more), and 99% of history we learn in school is White history. That's why we need Black Entertainment Television or Black History Month. People of color need to have something or someone to look to and not as a character in White Man's Story. 

And finally, there is a black culture in this country. Black people in this country have something to be proud of. They fought back against oppression (are still fighting), the Civil Rights Movement ... I mean, these are all things that unify this group of people and give them something to be proud of. There's nothing unifying for white people as a whole in this country . . . I'm sorry, but there's not. Even the founding of this country - OK, I wanna be proud I'm English and we came on over, or I'm Spanish and we "discovered" the Americas - but both those WHITE groups of people are responsible for the genocide of THOUSANDS of people of color. Is there something to be proud of in that?

& I can't speak to the Asian thing because I haven't studied it enough and have never explicitly asked my Asian friends . . . but I know they are annoyed to be called Korean when they're actually Chinese and vice versa. I can analogize it to "hispanics" -- I'm willing to bet people are not "proud to be Asian" just like someone is "proud to European" or "proud to South American", more than likely they are proud to be Korean or Chinese or Indian just like a "hispanic*" person is not proud to be hispanic -- they are proud to be Mexican or Cuban or Chilean.

Anyway, this is less than I could say on the subject BY FAR but I hope that maybe one person reading this might start to think about why, yes, we do need things in place that recognize the contributions of other races until a day when racism *actually* does not exist. And actually, YES, it might be racist to be proud of being White - don't just say it because it's "not fair" that other races can be proud of their race, ask yourself if you're really proud of being "WHITE" or you REALLY think we need a White History Month. . . or if you're actually proud of something else?

 

*a made up word by the US government that doesn't mean anything except they wanted to classify a group of people on the basis that they spoke the same language