To think skin colour matters WAY more than people like to admit

[daysayso]

I am involved in marketing campaigns - I won't say what because it's outing but let's say I recently worked on a campaign where the service being provided had absolutely nothing to do with race (so it wasn't makeup or hair for example).

Yet the vast majority that responded were people of colour (Same as the person featured in the ad) and it made me think how much your life chances are still dictated by your skin colour.

People like to consider race more than they like to admit even in spaces where it has nothing to do with anything, people just seem to feel more 'comfortable' with their own.

I felt for the first time in a long time my success will in part depend on my skin colour because for whatever reason the majority of white people that saw this ad decided it wasn't for them on the basis I'm someone of colour.

Please no arguments I'm looking for a mature conversation and if you find the topic sensitive you need not respond

Just looking for others experiences really

oh no I don’t? Mine has place of birth on it.
mill make an appointment for the ‘black stamp’

Now dad has gone from West Indian to half West Indian…

And her experience of racism has gone from zero to medium.

Unconscious bias is definitely a thing - if you think you aren’t susceptible to it then you’re kidding yourself. Accepting that you are susceptible i think is necessary to addressing the issues.

@Sarah0611 plot twist!

I feel like I should have brought snacks and a chair for how this is unravelling...

West Indian but also half West Indian but also somehow white. we’ve found a scientific marvel

Ah thank you. I do love a bit of patronising before bed! Have you considered maybe that I’ve been brought up with white parentage yet my absent father is mixed race? No i thought not.

maybe have you considered I may be stuck in between knowing who I am? No I thought not.

maybe. You could just be kind? Ummm no I thought not.

goodnight.

oh I thought you said you don’t have any issues to examine regarding your racial identity? Silly me getting your posts mixed up again! It’s hard to keep up you see

You are actually really horrid aren’t you? Trying to catch people out. Like they are telling fibs. How silly.

“like” they’re telling fibs! sure yeh

The definitions of racism - white privilege etc - on this thread are that of CRT - Critical Race Theory. Concepts which came out of American universities back in the 70s/80s I believe. So relatively new definitions. It is what it says it is - a theory and as such you don't have to believe in it. Personally I find it a divisive and damaging concept which goes doesn't really fit with ideas around race in the UK - after all we do not have the same historical social attitudes towards race as the US. They have been embraced here though and as we can see by this thread and generally on MN are presented as the only way to think about race.

Simply put CRT presents the idea that all inequalities experienced by POC are down to their skin colour and all white people no matter what desperate circumstances they live in are privileged and will always be elevated in some way because of the colour of their skin.

It's a personal choice whether or not to believe these ideas but personally for me I do not believe myself or my disabled children to be "privileged" and I do not feel any shame for behaviours carried out by people from centuries ago just because they happen to look like me.

I'm aware these are not popular opinions but I really think it is important to understand where these ideas come from and not just swallow them without thinking.

For further reading pretty much anything by Thomas Sowell is brilliant and "Woke Racism" by John McWhorter is excellent and accessible - both are black men.

@Sarah0611 So you do have issues. Whilst you work out whatever you need to please refrain from speaking ‘as a mixed raced woman’ until your discomfort takes you to ‘a white woman’.

Goodnight to you. I hope you are far more pleasant in real life than you are on here otherwise I do despair for you!
Regards, scientific marvel, white, black, green. Blue, mixed race person! 😂

I’ll take that on board. Thank you so much for educating me Aristotle.

Needs to be repeated. Completely agree.

Delicious!

@LondonWolf the point is that your hardships are not because of your race. You of course can experience difficulties but they are not because you are white.
You also aren’t expected to feel shame. Only to acknowledge that you, as a race, still benefit from slavery.

And the brave man who fought bigots with his white partner has now been demoted to an ‘absent dad’… It’s a tragedy too.

I don't think it's about feeling shame, at the end of the day our ancestors are not us. But it is important to recognise that white people have directly benefitted from exploitation of non white people over the years and we still benefit from certain privileges now in the workplace, in social settings, in health care etc etc that's not to say that white people can't have challenges and difficulties in life but we also can't say we all have it equally hard. To me there's different layers of discrimination and some people will be impacted by more of those layers than others. So for example a straight white young person will have less discrimination than a straight white young person with a disability, a straight white young person with a disability will have less discrimination than a black young person with a disability, who may face less discrimination than a lesbian black young person with a disability. It doesn't necessarily all have to boil down to race alone, but that is one particular area where white people will not have to struggle regardless of the other challenges in their lives at least that's how I understand it.