str8nochaser:

str8nochaser:

vegtablez:

“You don’t come back in here until you’ve apologized to every person in this room, Because you just exercised a freedom that none of these people of color have. When these people of color get tired of racism, they can’t just walk out, because there’s no place in this country where they aren’t going to be exposed to racism. They can’t even stay in their own homes and not be exposed to racism if they turn on their television. But you, as a white female, when you get tired of being judged and treated unfairly on the basis of your eye color, you can walk out that door, and you know it won’t happen out there. You exercised a freedom they don’t have. If you’re going to be in here you’re going to apologize to every person of color in this room. And do it now.”

“I’m sorry there’s racism in this country—

“BULLSHIT! No, you’re not going to say ‘I’m sorry there’s racism.’ You’re going to apologize for what YOU just did.”

“I will not apologize because it’s not a matter of race always—”

“OUT.”

Jane Elliot is a champ.

I especially appreciate the part from 8:24 with Keri and the point she was making regarding the “When I see you, I don’t see your color. I just see a person.”  This is the rallying cry of white liberals and white appearing folk- since there is a whole group of people who like to list all their different ethnicities as proof that even though they appear white, they are actually other— but that other includes or is exclusively people whose ethnic backgrounds are generally considered as phenotypically white. 

Dear White Liberals and Phenotypically White Appearing Others-

When you say the following:

“I don’t see color, I just see people.”

“Why does race even matter, all people should just be seen as people.”

or any permutation thereof

or you make a point to lay out your combination of phenotypically white ethnicities i.e. “I’m not white… I’m Italian, Armenian, Greek, Swiss… blah blah blah” and how those groups have been oppressed at some point in history (usually during a war), you are effectively doing two TERRIBLE things. 

First, you are erasing the identity of the person or persons of color to whom you are speaking. You are telling them you want to see them in a way that makes YOU comfortable and negates your privilege, rather than seeing them as THEY want to be seen. When you tell me you don’t see me as a BLACK woman, that HURTS. Me being BLACK is part of who I am. Its my rich skin tone, its my coily hair, its my full lips, its my broad nose— its ME. And to tell me you don’t see the parts of me that make my unique self, you are TELLING ME you just want to see a SHADOW of a full person. THAT is WRONG. 

Secondly, you are effectively invalidating the things we experience, both positive and negative, based on our skin color and how we identify. In addition, you are erasing the fact that for HUNDREDS of years, there was a GLOBAL SLAVE TRADE in which people of sub Saharan African descent were enslaved— and how that created the framework for how their descendants are treated… GLOBALLY. You are telling us those experiences don’t matter, that how we perceive what happened is a result of paranoia and psychosis, rather than a system that enforces the fact that BECAUSE of our DIFFERENCE, we are some how LESS or MORE THAN. Remember, stereotypes can be positive or negative… the damage they cause is in the fact that we are expected to live up (or down) to those stereotypes, rather than being taken for the individual we are that happens to belong to a larger group.

For those that didn’t catch this when I posted it at 9 AM.