in light of recent events letâs bring this back and add that the same goes for characters you whites do not relate to/like. you see a character that in the context of history and culture and society is acting in accordance to what is right and just, but which you read to be âbackwards,â âregressive,â âuncivilized,â or whatever else & immediately ascribe those values to them without looking at the norms and values and cultural background that they find themselves in
you simply cannot look at nonwhite media, especially ones that are as far removed from white western society as, say, historical cdramas or bollywood movies, and then force your own perspective and reading onto it to make something more relatable to you and make your view seem like the superior one
we know youâre obsessed with imposing your own ethnocentric cultural norms and values on us since ye olden days. we know you believe your whiteness to be the ideal to strive for and that everything related to that is Obviously what these backwards ethnics should try to achieve, even when you dont even understand what it is that youâre talking about.
we know that youâre convinced of the fact that your reading of nonwhite media from a western perspective is therefore Totally justified and not at all a case of white privilege and colonial thinking rearing its head while also ignoring the fact that you, like so many before you, are contributing to the whitewashing, sanitizing, and purposeful mischaracterizing of nonwhite cultures, traditions, history, and so on.
you see a society depicted that is structured differently from your white western âcivilizationâ and think to yourself how it could be reformed to look more like whatever it is that youâre familiar with seeing, that youâre comfortable with seeing; you do not stop and think about why youâre so uncomfortable with this Otherness. you do not stop and think why youâre so opposed to these depictions of the unfamiliar, nor do you care to examine why youâre so keen to whitewash these depictions to fit your own narrative and reading of the text (as in, the broad sense of âtext,â not necessarily the meaning of words alone).
you see a character who behaves differently from what you expect or want and claim them to be a horrible irredeemable villain, unfit for the roles that they play. you do not stop and think about what their actions mean in the context of their culture, you do not stop and think about the way society, culture, history etc. shape the way these characters act, nor what those actions mean within that context. you instead view them from your own, again, white, western, ethnocentric, colonial perspective, fit them into a framework that is not intended to hold them, and find them lacking.
i am asking you: why are you so set on refusing to see how your whiteness affects literally every single way you interact with anything that is nonwhite?
