You're white. You haven't experienced racism

[PatricksRum]

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

Carol. It really isn't racist. And a lot of BAME people DO feel powerless. The same as a lot of women feel powerless to change a world that is highly geared towards male dominance.

@CandyLeBonBon
Thank you.
I just posted above.
A simple book for your children.
A smile.
Repeating our messages to people who refuse to engage with black people.
Learning and learning and learning again
Stand with us but allow us to lead.
My friend told me today of a protest he attended in the USA yesterday. White people began smashing car windows and making it violent. They pleaded with them to stop. The police came and the peaceful protest was stopped.

No @YgritteSnow because the post was abusive and the poster clearly dived into the conversation calling the OP racist.

You think that's ok?

How can you eradicate the racist mindset when posters are literally falling over themselves to tell us how they've personally been the victim or 'racism' and they're white? As if their own personal experiences are important enough to dilute the message that the systemic racism suffered by POC in the west must stop
A thousand times this

@PatricksRum - experiencing racism doesn’t make you some sort of expert. I too have experienced racism but I am a white person. We all need to listen to each other and try to understand each other’s experiences. Otherwise it’s just arrogance and pig headedness.

@CandyLeBonBon

"The problem with this statement is that your elders maybe bigoted and prejudice against white people, but this affects white people not one jot. Because the white people are in charge and your elders' opinions, whilst unpleasant, don't materially affect any white persons life, income or civil liberties."

It affects my white boyfriends life who can't meet my extended family and be welcomed like my cousins boyfriend who is a Bangladeshi boy.

Is this more important than the systematic racism and excused killings of black people? Absolutely not, not even close.

Did the OP directly ask me how someone who's in a minority can fell superior to a majority and therefore be racist towards them? Yes, that's the question I was answering here. A question directly posed to me.

There is a big problem with black on black crime in London. My friend is black has just moved her black DS to private school as she feels he is safer with white students. There are only 3 black students in his new school but she feels it is safer.

@350
Jews are an ethnoreligious group.

I will never not speak out if someone is trying to pass a lie as fact. No amount of history or injustice gives someone the right to expect others to remain silent if they want to say something as crazy as “all humans are born with one eye”. If I actually were to keep my mouth shut it would mean not respecting that person as an equal. It would be treating them like a child throwing a tantrum.

@ILikeyourHairyHands I agree with you. Its generally about money, not race.
Just because you're white doesn't mean that you won't be discriminated against. I'm Eastern European, don't have an accent, and am at a respectable socioeconomic level. I don't experience discrimination. My mother, however, has an accent and I notice that she is treated badly by everyone, people of color, white people, doctors, you name it. She feels it deeply and it bothers her. I have had to speak on her behalf many times because she is treated like shit otherwise.

@PatricksRum. I will do all of that. My children donated to the go fund me today. We discuss the issues, and they feel as strongly as I do. We are hear support your actions. We hear you.

@AvranaKernsBestSpider - no one is saying that racism towards POC in the West shouldn’t stop. We are disputing that op has a monopoly on suffering racism or exclusive understanding of it.

Jesus, I'm horrified by what you are all piling on op here. Does any of this affect your life really?

for you, OP.

I too very much agree with Rosie's post on the social majority.

I reiterate that this takes nothing away from the trouble black people regularly receive and I am firmly behind Black Lives Matter.*

Then, with all due respect, don't mention it.
This is about us. This is our time not yours.

Oh I'm bored with your constant implications that anyone not reacting to this thread in exactly the way you think they should is a troll or an uneducated racist. Don't address me again. You'll be ignored.

That's hard for you @changeitupagain. I'm sorry you're going through that.

Carole I wouldn't say the op is being racist but I do think they are wrong in their statement.

Changeitupagain has left a few great posts explaining why. I think the OP is just angry (entitled to feel that way with everything going on) and this with their experiences have formed this opinion.

Schoolsoutforcorona Noones falling over themselves to tell stories. They were using personal evidence (evidence, remember that OP) to explain quite articulately and logically why they politely disagree with OPs statement. That's called a debate.

I'm not sure where or in which decade you went to school but I can assure you that I assumed the white kid got into trouble, I had to read it twice to work out that you as black got into trouble for saying 'white dog' and the white mud didn't for saying 'black dog'. That's unheard of in my experience of schools.

Again no one is claiming their experience trumps BLM but as you can see from the dozens of posters, some people do believe that whites people can be on the receiving end of racism.

I'm white, have never been a victim of racism (or racial prejudice), and am usually among the vocal anti-racist voices in threads on here.

But (there it is) I do struggle with some people's insistence that the 'prejudice plus power' definition of racism, is now the sole definition of racism (when it demonstrably isn't).

It feels a little like word games, rebranding what might previously have been known as 'institutional racism' as 'racism' and certain other behaviors, that previously would have been labelled 'racist' as 'racial prejudice'. I'm not sure how that's helpful.

There's (in my view) a really good page on Rational Wiki that discusses this, which references academic papers and articles from people of colour, who reject the idea of P+P as the only definition of racism.

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power

I'd encourage the OP and others to give it a read (as well as the materials it references). Food for thought even if you dont agree.

I'd really like to stress I'm not attempting to downplay the racism and prejudices, both individual and systemic, that effect people of colour, or in any way dismiss my privilege. Were is only white folk that were dismissive of the P+P definition as the only definition, I'd be shutting the fuck up.

@AllNaturalIngredients Thank you. I'm truly sorry you have experienced racist prejudice and race-fuelled attacks. That is wrong. I don't condone it.

[quote Porcupineinwaiting]@rosiejaune I have Jewish blood on both sides but all converted generations ago. I am white but have far darker skin than my SiL who is is a British Jew of many generations standing. I would say that what she has sometimes experienced as a direct consequence of being Jewish is racism. She does enjoy some white privilege but at the same time its frightening how some people home in on her Jewishness and she's had bad experiences with teachers and health care professionals as well as random members of the public.[/quote]
OK. I haven't said anything that disagrees with that.

I do think Jews experience racism. Some experience more than others (depending on their skin tone, origin, clothes, name etc). They may experience it both from Jews and non-Jews, depending on their exact mix of ethnicities etc.

And even if they are perceived as white by everyone they ever come into contact with (i.e. are not identifiable as Jewish at all), they are still likely to suffer to some extent based on epigenetic changes inherited from traumatised recent ancestors, or simply the emotional effect of knowing what happened to their relatives in pogroms or the Holocaust, for example.

However, a secular light-skinned Jew walking along the street is clearly not at risk from the police in the way a black person is. And various other examples.

I am white. White people can NOT experience racism EVER!!!

Wow, some of the people on this post really need educated.

This conversation and challenge is long overdue. However uncomfortable it may make some feel.

As a white woman I accept it is my duty to challenge racism. In the outside world and internally. We've been brought up with privilege and it's hard to untangle. Or, I'll certainly admit to thinking I had it right and been corrected.

@rosiejaune's post was brilliant.

'Regardless of the country you are in. You hold the power worldwide.
We have no power over you hence the inability to experience racism'

Tell that to white women who go to Arab countries and end up being imprisoned or killed for being sexually promiscuous/a government spy/whatever, when they were nothing of the sort, their only crime was being a white woman.