DAS RACIST

Okay, so I have a Tumblr that I frequent quite often. The blogs I follow range from fandom to photography to fashion to music to social justice - the latter category is usually the most interesting to me, because I consider myself a social justice advocate.

And the topic of this post is racism because of something I saw today, stemming from a discussion by a white person who said they don't date people of color at all - someone added a comment saying that "people of color can be hella racist."

Normally, when reading/discussing social justice topics, I try and remain neutral and objective, but this was just too much. As a person of color, it is literally impossible for me to be a racist in the United States, because the social, political, and economic systems all reinforce each other to place white people at the top of the hierarchy at the expense of everyone who isn't white. Luckily, the USA's manages to conflate racism and sexism and heteronormativity and cisnormativity, so basically everyone who isn't a heterosexual, cisgender, Protestant Christian, white male is lesser.

But we're going to keep this as closely related to race as possible, because race is probably the subject I am the most comfortable talking about with regard to oppression.

Do you know why I as a biracial (Black and White) man cannot be racist? That is because in the United States, racist sentiments necessarily include notions of inferiority/superiority based on race - people of color are not white, therefore they are lesser than white people, therefore they are to be oppressed by the "better" white people. This is not a new concept - White Man's Burden, anyone? Where the entire point was to go to places where non-white people lived and "improve" their lives by making them more like white people, because by virtue of their race and non-European ethnicity they were barbarians who needed to be controlled for their own good?

Benevolent racism is possibly the only thing worse than aggressive racism, because it allows people in positions of racial privilege to oppress and marginalize and be okay with themselves at the end of the day. There is nothing okay about profiting from a system that built itself on the oppression of an entire race just because of the skin color you're born with. There is no science behind this, there is no intellectually or logically valid argument to prove that people of color are lesser than white people simply by not being white.

And as for why I especially cannot be racist in the United States - I'm half-black. One half of my racial heritage was systematically subjugated, oppressed, exploited, murdered, tortured, marginalized, and demonized for at least three centuries. Why? Because they were not white. Because they were not European, because they were not industrialized, because they were not similar in infrastructure and civilization to the West - that was the rationale behind the enslavement of Africans by the West. I am refraining from talking about Arab slavery, since Arabs did enslave Africans as well, because I am unfamiliar with that history, and additionally I have no frame of reference, never having lived in an Arab nation. I live in the United States, where it was acceptable, expected, and praised for refusing to allow people the right to live their lives free of terror, to wake up and have a choice as to how they wanted their day to go.

For over 300 years, Africans and African Americans (a distinction should be drawn, incidentally, because they are not the same) were relegated to less-than-personhood simply because white people said so.

I have never been able to make someone feel like they are not a person because of their race.
I have never been able to tell someone that I am better than them because of my race.
I have never been able to tell a white person that one point in history they were considered only three-fifths of a person.
I have never been able to ridicule someone for being white, or for being part-white. There is no stigma attached to having "one drop" of white blood.
I have never been able to successfully accuse and murder a white man for raping a black woman just because he looked at her on the street and whistled.
I have never been able to tell a white person that they are lesser than I am.
I have never been able to refuse to let a white person learn to read for fear of them becoming too educated and potentially overturning the entire social/political/economic system on which my livelihood was based.
I have never been able to tell a white person that they are genetically inferior to me because of their race; whites were never part of a "mudsill class."
I have never been able to have the luxury of not noticing when I am the only person like me in the room.
I have never been able to look at television programs and count on the fact that my race will be more represented than any other.
I have never been able to call a white person a term so offensive that in modern consciousness people have to refer to it by its first letter followed by "word."
I have never been able to refuse to allow a white person to sit at a counter, use a restroom, drink from a fountain, live in a certain area, obtain a certain job, make a certain salary, marry another white person, keep a white person from finding jobs other than service jobs, keep a white person from moving to another state.
I have never been able to tell a white person that regardless of their family heritage, they are still white, with a negative connotation.
I have never been able to tell a white person that they have no rights that I am bound to respect.

So do not ever presume to tell me that, should I state a certain racial stereotype or exhibit certain behaviors toward people of my race or of other racial minorities or white people, that I am being racist. Simply by virtue of being half-black, that is what people see about me before they see anything else. They see the color of my skin and know instinctively that I am somehow "other." And 300+ years of inferiority is hard to forget, on both sides. White people find it hard to forget that even less than 50 years ago, I would've been inexorably beneath them because of the color of my skin; I find it hard to forget that less than 50 years ago, I would've been somehow less of a valued person because of the color of my skin. White people find it hard to forget that they aren't automatically better than everyone else; I have trouble forgetting the same thing.

Now, that isn't to say that people of color (I spoke only about African Americans, but that's because I am one; the concept works for all racial minorities, though none except Native Americans have suffered as African Americans have - that isn't the oppression olympics, that's history) can't express harmful stereotypes and discriminate against themselves and other racial minorities. But that isn't racism, because guess what? Here in the US of A, no person of color is better than any other person of color because we're all not white. Sorry to burst your bubble, but victims of racism can't be racist.

We can exhibit what is called "horizontal hostility" - that is, harmful behavior or discriminatory attitudes toward those of the same race or those of different racial minorities - and we can exhibit what is called "internalized oppression" - the adoption of the same attitudes that white supremacists have, that people of color are intrinsically lesser than white people, that they cannot be trusted, that they only want what is best for them instead of everyone, that they are out to ruin society - but we cannot be racist. Blacks cannot be racist against Hispanic peoples, who cannot be racist against Asian peoples, who cannot be racist against Pacific Islander peoples, who cannot be racist against Native Americans, who cannot be racist against African Americans. It just doesn't work, not here. How can we put ourselves above anyone else when we're already at the bottom?

So until my people have been credited with oppressing another people for half a millennium for no reason other than that the color of their skin is different, do not ever call me racist, because I will lose much of any respect I had for you. Calling a person of color racist is ignorant of the history (in the United States) that makes the term "racist" such an insult.

Until I can call into question the citizenship of the President, I am no racist.
Until I can call myself "color-blind" and say that we are living in a "post-racial" society, I am no racist.
Until I can have children that I won't have to automatically worry about their emotional, mental, and social development by putting them in public school, I am no racist.