BastardGM

When i was in 3rd grade, a friend of mine, my neighbor, was doing the old "finger eyes" asian mocking thing while saying "ching chong wai!" at another student on the bus. after we got off the bus, i told him that doing that was kind of racist (i wasn't as confident about speaking as i am now).

He told me it wasn't. He was italian.

that is my first memory of a white person telling me something isn't racist when i brought it up. It was not the last. here i am, over 30 years later, and folks are still saying it.

It is because he had never experienced racism of that nature before. he had no reference points. his radar wasn't up for that.

Mine was. Most PoC have had their radar up their entire lives. Since even before they knew what that was. it comes naturally.

it is frustrating because when white americans want to but in with their opinions, PoC generally say, "your opinion doesn't matter."

but i want to be clear. It isn't because you are white.

It is because you lack the experience or education to speak on these things.

Like if i met a white person who grew up in korea, and faced xenophobia in korea, then they would have some experience. Hell, my brothers and i faced some of that racism in korea just for being mixed koreans. But if a white person had that experience, then they could have a nuanced opinion on subtle racism.

However, and i cannot stress this enough, there is a limit to what you have experience with even in that situation.

Take me for example. I have experienced racism due to being hispanic, being asian, and for being mixed race. So i can speak to my experience on all three of those vectors and subtle racism in general.

You know what i don't shove down other people's throats? My opinion on racism that black people experience. Or anti-semetism. because even my experience does not reach those topics. I'm not white. So you cannot blame whiteness for my exclusion from having my opinion listened to. It is because of my lack of experience.

so please, excluding white, inexperienced voices when we discuss racism is not, in an of itself, racism. it is simply a judgement call based on experience.

Jane Austin Powers

If you started a headline with 4 names no one has ever heard before, most people won’t even read all the way to the pertinent information in the headline, let alone be intrigued enough to click on the article itself. And more people know where Africa is than where Nigeria is. I’m not making a value judgment there, it’s just the truth. It’s a funnel approach: you start by appealing to the broadest or most culturally relevant possible demographic in the headline so people will click on it for more information, and then you start going into detail:

In less than 2 sentences we have names and a location. 

I checked another article about the same thing, with a similarly catchy and vague title: 

And again: names (and this time even ages and pictures) and a location within the first 2-3 sentences of the article, immediately following an eye-and-attention grabbing, snappy and easy-to-digest headline.

Okay, it hasn't been moving in a raccoon-like fashion for a while, so you're pretty sure that it's not being carried around by the raccoon anymore. Oh, it looks like it's been found, someone turned it on and charged it! A notification pings on your computer, someone has sent a message from your phone!

"23rqrferq233rqrw434r". The phone is moving on the GPS again. It has been picked up by another fucking raccoon!

1. 30 countries will move toward this within the next 5 years.

2. It won’t even enter American political discourse for 5, 10 or 15 years from now.

3. If it’s proposed it will incite a moral panic, as the usual suspects raise the alarm about the specter of communism, a lazy labor force, etc.

4. Measures of lifespan, health-span and well-being will increase in the countries that adopt it.  These same measures will fall in the U.S. and virtually no one will notice.

Yes, that person COULD have been born in 1988.

Yes, that person COULD be saying that it was specifically corrupt “religious people” who crucified Jesus.

Yes, that person COULD be honestly confused about how dual citizenship works.

Yes, that person COULD think that (((these brackets))) are just another silly internet joke.

H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so “88″ signals “heil hitler.” It’s not actually used as a proper abbreviation like people use FYI or ASAP, but it signals to other neonazis that they’re “in on the joke” (the joke is xenophobia). Think of it like how terfs sometimes choose usernames like “radical-womb-lesbian”

“Jesus was killed by religious people,” and it’s more obvious sibling, “Jews put Jesus on the cross,” stirs up antisemitic thoughts - Jews are bad because Jews killed Jesus. This is most common in evangelical Christians. It’s inaccurate and wouldn’t be good logic besides, but the important thing is to signal to your fellow Christian antisemites that you think “those Jewish fellows are Evil and Jealous of our Perfect Ideology.”

Israel offers citizenship to Jews. This is intended to be so that, if a country decides to restrict Jewish rights or revoke our citizenship, we have somewhere to go and be citizens. Antisemites see Jews have dual citizenship and think “ah, now I can claim that they’re acting in the interests of a foreign power!” This leads into “Jews with political power are traitorous Israeli agents who don’t have Real [nationality] Interests in mind!!”