Unspoken
Unspoken
I am not annoyed that people want to help. I think when most black people get annoyed in this situation it's because we've been saying it all along, we're trying to tell you now, and it's kind of annoying having to say the same shit because people just aren't getting it or they can't seem to put what they are seeing into context. They can't grasp that racism isn't just happening in a flash. It's constant. It's everywhere and it makes no sense as to how it could happen. They are seeing it as if it's all a shock that there are so many people out there that are racist. We knew all along. We never could be sure how many, but we knew.
I hope this helps whoever reads it to gain a little better understanding of racism, and that's not to say that you don't understand how it works, it's just me giving you what I feel is a better explanation of it as it pertains to this country.
The first thing you have to realize is the timeline. The timeline of this country is not a long one relative to the history of other countries, but one thing you have to remember is that the people that came to this country, saw themselves as superior to other races. That's what racism is. These people that founded this land built it on the backs of slaves. Slaves were property. (Context: When you are writing your will, you're thinking of all people you want to leave your stuff to. You're not thinking about leaving your house to your car.) Keeping that in mind, when these men were writing the constitution, they weren't writing "for liberty and justice for all" with their property in mind. They just weren't.
While white men were writing the laws of this country, they weren't writing them with black people in mind. They were less than them, but time and time again, black people would answer the call and fight side by side with white people for this country hoping that they would be finally seen as equal. After WWII, black people were not treated equal. My grandfather served and he was a less than poor tobacco farmer. White people did everything they could to steal from that man, but he managed to provide for 11 kids. He had to depend on people that hated him to pay him fairly. They didn't. My grandma used to clean for white folks and they would give her scraps to take home as if they were doing her some great kindness. They could have just paid her more but the scraps were okay. My grandma is 90 years old and still alive today. They HAD to make due to survive in a time when white people saw them as less.
It wasn't until MLK was murdered that white people finally decided to say,"Okay, I guess we should put it in the constitution that it is illegal to be racist." That was toward the end of the 60's and that was supposed to help change. That was supposed to end the wide spread racism. Problem is, that paper didn't change anything. It just made racists have to be smarter about being racist but people still were, especially in the south. Obviously things got "better" over time because everyone learned to play nice, mostly, but it still wasn't fair to black people and I am going to tell you exactly why:
White people in this country thought a piece of paper made it all better so they didn't have to talk about it anymore.
That's what I think anyway. I think racists got smarter and learned to hide in plain sight, they had to, the world was always eventually going to get smaller, and instead of being openly racist they would say stuff like, "don't date outside your race because it's in the bible." They began to find little ways to justify being racist so as to pass it down. Some people didn't have a racist bone in their body but they also didn't talk about how racists are still out there and how it's bad and you shouldn't do it and so it kind of created this illusion racism had or was going away but it wasn't. Since the majority of white people weren't actively fighting racism, racists have been able to just operate freely. That's not to say that they are going out and perpetrating blatant acts or racism at any chance, but they have been able to do thing here and there that they get away with like not hiring someone because they are black, not paying them the same because they are black, and some times they do just act like assholes openly and sometimes there are even acts of violence and murder and when it does happen there is always some justification for it.
Example:
We watched that cop murder George Floyd. He buried his knee in the back of his neck for 10 minutes and then got fired b/c he acted inappropriately. Now some people will say that he was a criminal and if he hadn't been doing bad shit it would not have happened.
Do you see where I am going with this? The practice of racism has been normalized by a system of justifications because if someone acknowledges racism, then you have to acknowledge it's a problem everywhere. Does it make sense? That's why they do everything they can to justify it because they don't want to admit there is a problem and that problem is that there is an inherent level of brutality toward black people that is condoned when working as a police officer that is based on racism. If they admit that then they have to admit the system is corrupt and why would the people believe in it? That's why they want to dispel white privilege and that's why the sound so indignant when you even mention it. They can't let the curtain fall because then they have to help fix the problem. They have to help make things fair for everyone and guess what making things fair for everyone means? That someone else will have to then be uncomfortable (LOOKING HARD AS FUCK AS YOU RICH ELITE CORPORATE PEOPLE!) which is why it will be difficult to change because someone doesn't want to let go of even a little bit of the privileges and luxuries the system has afforded them despite the fact that they may not be racist and actually want things to be fair.
And that's all I've got for you. I can't give you everything and I am sure somethings I said may lead you to have questions. Good. Go read. Investigate. The information is out there and it's not up to black people to help you find understanding, it's up to you find understanding and figure out where things are messed up and how you can help fix them.
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