Racism And Why I’m obsessed.
Jk I don’t need a reason to be obsessed with racism other than because I’m a human being who is alive who is a race not white and I live in America. It’s just something that I think about all the time sometimes.
I just had an epiphany regarding an aspect of my experience of racism which was fueled recently by the incident with United and that asian man. I couldn’t put my finger on how it was a racist incident, other than the fact he himself proclaimed that he felt that way aloud at the beginning of the incident. Most outlets reported that “it was chosen randomly” not specifying how and if it was definitely a computer algorithm that was set prior.
The scary thing to me about racism is that most of the time most of my life people have and are very polite. But the video of that man’s experience shows a bullying incident. I’ve never been bullied like that in my life, but everybody who watched that man or watched the video felt sympathy for that man. I didn’t only feel sympathy, I felt humiliated for that man and embarrassed for him. I felt that his behavior lacked dignity but I have to remind myself that he was under significant duress and also actually acted bravely. So the epiphany is the realization that a lot of racism apologists love to point out that people are, in fact, very polite most of the time. The problem is that people of color have concrete experiences of sudden helpless alienation despite mostly existing in a society capable of genuine love towards each other. Perhaps all people experience this, but people of color can concretely map the reason for their alienation as directly connected with their race.
That’s why I’m obsessed with racism. I don’t always feel safe yet.
