Random white tumblr users would maybe benefit from ceasing to view racism as an immutable thing that you are and rather a thing that you do. So many people get confronted with their implicit biases and instead of stopping and saying 'oh yeah, they're right, I should do something to change that', they say 'but I'm not racist, because racist people are evil and I'm not evil.' Unfortunately racist people are your uncle, and your mother, and your sister, and your friend, and you. It's not an immutable characteristic, it's a thing that you do, and you're so caught up in your perception of yourself as a 'good person' that you choose to be blind to the racism you perpetuate, thus staying racist. It's a vicious ironic cycle.
mmmmhmmm
All of this, but if you'll all indulge me, I just want to spell it out again a bit differently, because I think it's important: once you start thinking of "good" and "bad" as teams you belong to, not only do you become blind to the evil you perpetuate, but you start thinking of evil as good. Using the example above, is racism bad? Most people, I hope, would say yes. But when you think of good and bad as teams you're assigned to, rather than things anyone can do, it doesn't matter whether racism is good or bad, it only matters which team is doing it. If you're on the "good" team, then you can be as racist as you like, as long as you're being racist to the people on the "bad" team. Rather than racism being something that's always wrong, no matter what, now you've created a class of acceptable targets that you can get away with being racist to, because you're on the "good" team and they're not. This can happen with anything, not just racism. Fatphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, ableism...anything.
