You're white. You haven't experienced racism

[PatricksRum]

I'm so sick of repeating myself today.
AIBU or is ignorance just bliss?

It could be argued that white women are receiving racism on this very thread.

Racism is a term covering all what people are naming here. The prejudice, the systemic racism, the discrimination.
Same way like, for example, sexual offences cover rape, assault by penetration and sexual assault.

Saying that something isn't racism, just racial prejudice is like saying that something isn't sexual offence, it's just a sexual assault.

Doesn't make sense. That's why people are arguing.

Sorry that should have read 'powerful white men'

I didn't mean that, and I'm sorry it came across that way. I meant simply that what's being called racism in that context is misogyny, as those men treat Asian women appallingly too.

And I was saying that it was like when men tell us that men suffer in that way too. Not that they themselves are rapists. I'm really sorry that I wasn't clear.

What the OP is doing is erasure of other people's experiences and it's just as utterly shit as the issues she is validly upset by. Go tell a holocaust survivor they haven't experienced racism because their skin is white? Or read up on the Birmingham 6, the Guildford 4 or Bloody Sunday in 1972 where the British Army opened fire on a civil rights march killing 14 people (7 of which were teenagers) and wounding 12 others. And it took until 2019 for charges to finally be taken against one soldier. And that's just modern history.

None of this makes any racism faced by black people any less awful. It's truly shit and needs to be addressed and fixed. But denying the real lived experiences of other people won't have the desired effect. It will in fact make it worse. There has long, long been a tactic of dividing oppressed peoples. Of othering them from each other so that their differences feel more prominent than the common oppressor. It's how the oppressor ensures they don't join together and force change. Don't fall into the trap of highlighting the small differences over the greater shared experiences, it will make us far, far less likely to achieve the necessary change.

I think the OP would be more accurate if it said

"You are white, you have never experienced the systematic racism experienced over centuries by black people".

Possibly, but anyone with more than two functioning brain cells knows exactly the point she was making. If people have no argument other than one based on pedantry then they have no fucking argument, even if they don't realise that themselves.

But sexual assault is not rape. Rape is rape. They are all sexual crimes and are part of an overall problem concerning sexual violence but they don't mean the same things.

I still don't believe that white people experience racism in the sense that the world's power structure in the west is structured by and around powerful men

‘The West’ is not the entire world though...

Indeed, assuming that power structures are always the same everywhere (white men at the top) is deeply ethnocentric.

@TheClitterati

A better title would have been “Black Lives Matter can we all work together to make a change?”

So go ahead and start that thread @Ihatecoronavirus.

Like every other MNer the OP can start whatever bloody thread she wants.

She can, but then she can’t dictate how people answer her. That is my point. If she didn’t want to hear about racism against anyone white, starting a thread with the title You’re White You Haven’t Experienced Racism was not very well thought out.

Other than an argument I'm not sure what the OP is trying to achieve, and I think actually is adding to the divide which the whole BlM movement NEEDS to overcome. By saying that white people dont experience racism and so dont understand is just going to divide people. In recognising the experience of racism of one section of society they are at the same time dismissing the experience of another, that's divisive. A more realistic and helpful approach would be to say 'you know when white people experience x (or you experience x) and how that made you feel/behave? Well for black people in x (America) it's like that but it's not one person/a group of people but institutional'. The BLM campaign is not about black people having it WORSE so much as having to live it MORE. Fundamentally, the BLM campaigns need white allies, and this stance of 'you're white so you will never have any idea' is detrimental to this.

When the boot was put on the other foot, white people in Zimbabwe found out what racism felt like in short order. This does not mean two wrongs make a right, nor does it absolve white colonialism for the initial oppression, any more than calls to pan-africanism can erase Zulu and Ndebele aggression against Mashona and other groups in the past. Wen you are on the pointy end of the stick, it hurts.

The fascinating figures are the UK educational outcomes and the widely varying performances of different ethnic groups. The worst off are Black Carribbean boys, then Pakistani boys, then white working class boys. The best are Chinese, followed by Indians.

Completely agree @CandyLeBonBon
It’s about who holds the power, historically and today.

[quote Tappering]Is it not possible for a white person to live in a country such as Japan and experience racism?

As PP have said, this is racial prejudice not racism. There is a very distinct difference.

www.aclrc.com/myth-of-reverse-racism[/quote]
It doesn't make any difference at all to people who are subjected to it.

The label you give it doesn't matter.

I lived in Malaysia for many years, was called 'white ghost' white devil' I was spat at. I was unable to buy certain houses, I was taxed at a different rate, I was ignored in shops and restaurants.

Not sure it was down to my eye colour

But sexual assault is not rape. Rape is rape. They are all sexual crimes and are part of an overall problem concerning sexual violence but they don't mean the same things.

Well, yes. I did not say they mean the same thing... Sexual assault is not rape. Racial prejudice is not systemic racism. However rape and sexual assault are sexual offence as racial prejudice and systemic racism are racism.
It's about the main term which covers other.

Also on the sexual offences analogy, it's clear that sexual violence is punishable by law. If someone grabs my breast whilst walking past me (this has happened) - a sexual assault, it is a crime and punishable by law. A person being stopped and search by police more times than his white peer is not. That's the difference.

We all have a race so we can experience discrimination towards us because of that race or even because of a race people perceive us to be that we aren’t actually (because people’s race dosent always fit their outward appearance)

Right now black lives matter - and until this is starting to be fixed other stuff can’t matter as much.

It is a discussion that needs to be had in some way though to try and figure a way through that creates equality for all. Previous attempts in the UK to avoid racism towards an ethnic minority have caused more racism - like Rotherham sex gangs - which then causes more racism from the native white community and so the cycle perpetuates.

We need a way out.

Also citing some random web page reference to the difference of racial prejudice not being racism means nothing.

I can show you a web page where Elvis is alive and the earth is flat.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between racial prejudice and racism. Is the former if you think it, and the latter if you act on it?

You just can't presume that every white person has never experienced racism.

I live in East London with my 3 kids and have done for my entire life, the area that I live now has a very prominent black and Asian community. My 6 year old girl is one of 4 white children in her class and she has never mentioned this her eyes just don't see it, the kids who see it are the little black girls who teased her for her white hair and who said she couldn't play because she has white skin and that she couldn't come to their house because one of their Dads doesn't like white people. My son has been mugged twice and beaten up once (during mugging) by an entire gang of black boys one who said "I'll stick a knife through your heart you white piece of shit" then took his phone and trainers. The second time he was mugged was by a group of Asian boys and one of them said "look at the little white boy crying like a pussy". My two sons (13 & 15) are now considering finishing their schooling in a different part of the country where their dad lives which will break my heart.

Most of the people where I live are lovely regardless of their race but don't tell me white people NEVER experience racism. I'll send you the photos of my sons face if you want?