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I want to comment on something in response to a tweet: white privilege. The author said "we're the worst of humanity."
Most white people aren't bad. White people individually aren't necessarily the problem. It's the system they've built.
Most white people aren't bad. White people individually aren't necessarily the problem. It's the system they've built.
You shouldn't feel guilty for being white. You can't help that you're white. You shouldn't feel ashamed for something you can't control. The idea of white privilege isn't that your life hasn't been hard, it's that your race isn't one of the things making it harder.
In saying "white people individually aren't the problem", I'm not dismissing microaggressions. There are beliefs and behaviors that come with being a white person in America, not necessarily because of your skin color, but because of the systems and hierarchies that exist here.
You can definitely work to overcome those biases and be aware of how your skin color benefits you in a country where Black people are killed for things like sleeping in their own home. But beating yourself up for being white doesn't help.
I understand how one can be defensive or wallow in despair when they hear someone say something like "white people are racist." But people say these things because they're frustrated at their oppression. If you want to help black people, such responses aren't helpful.
(I personally avoid saying things like that about any group of people because I don't think it's helpful, but I don't think it's necessarily wrong to do so.)
So—and I know this is ironic coming from me—don't focus on the negative here. Acknowledge this privilege and work to dismantle your perceptions and actions that come as a result of it. That'll help us more than calling yourself a piece of shit or whatever else for being white.
