When I was younger, I believed it was absurd to think that black people—or any minority, for that matter—could be racist to each other. My reasoning was: “We’re all minorities. It makes no sense to be against each other.”
I was wrong. However, some people still insist that Black people can’t be racist. This is comprehensively false, and despite what I thought in my youth, racism is a mindset that anyone can obtain.
I would like to start by saying, you can be racist to a white person. However, there’s a difference. A person can be prejudiced to a white person as an individual, but not systemically. A racist is defined as a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people with the source being their inclusion within a racial or ethnic group. On the other hand, systemic racism is defined as the discriminatory policies, practices, and cultural norms ingrained in society that perpetuate discrimination and disadvantages for people of color while simultaneously maintaining positions of power for white people.
These ideologies have made their way into many cultures and developed many branches of racism within communities, including Black culture. In a multitude of ways, there has been a normalization of racism in the black community, not only upon others, but against ourselves. The community as a whole maintains certain ideas about what makes a man a man, and what makes a woman a woman. These generalized ideas of femininity and masculinity lead to colorism, featurism, texturism, and all other types of discrimination that we don’t even realize are built on the historical goal to be perceived as more white to the public. White-passing.
These oppressions don’t exempt black people from being racist. In fact, I would argue that for minorities today, the racism amongst ourselves has been rampant. Illusionary truths are what I’m referencing. Simplified, it basically means that when you joke about something enough, you start to believe it because of a cognitive bias. So, when you joke about black people being monkeys, the living situations of India, or the features of Asians, you are slowly deluding yourself into a state of false discrimination. With the way the internet works and Gen Z interacts, we tend to find a lot of things funny, making a joke out of serious situations. This mindset has slowly invited other people into minority safe spaces. This shift in perspective is shown in the big leap to conservatism among young men and voters, while Gen Z women and older members of the generation remain largely progressive.
With the current state of the world, I often get the thought that most people don’t actually care about each other. It’s unsettling to see the effects of “propaganda” and the repetition of events that mimic history. History is truly repeating itself. People are quick to turn a head and remove a helping hand, not realizing that even if it doesn’t affect them, it eventually will. The overwhelming desensitization of external and internalized racism across all communities is a harmful cycle that will soon affect us all. Now is the time to face the facts and realize that we’re all racist in some way, and as products of our environments, it’s our job to educate ourselves on the hate that lies within our everyday actions.
I was wrong. However, some people still insist that Black people can’t be racist. This is comprehensively false, and despite what I thought in my youth, racism is a mindset that anyone can obtain.
I would like to start by saying, you can be racist to a white person. However, there’s a difference. A person can be prejudiced to a white person as an individual, but not systemically. A racist is defined as a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic toward people with the source being their inclusion within a racial or ethnic group. On the other hand, systemic racism is defined as the discriminatory policies, practices, and cultural norms ingrained in society that perpetuate discrimination and disadvantages for people of color while simultaneously maintaining positions of power for white people.
These ideologies have made their way into many cultures and developed many branches of racism within communities, including Black culture. In a multitude of ways, there has been a normalization of racism in the black community, not only upon others, but against ourselves. The community as a whole maintains certain ideas about what makes a man a man, and what makes a woman a woman. These generalized ideas of femininity and masculinity lead to colorism, featurism, texturism, and all other types of discrimination that we don’t even realize are built on the historical goal to be perceived as more white to the public. White-passing.
These oppressions don’t exempt black people from being racist. In fact, I would argue that for minorities today, the racism amongst ourselves has been rampant. Illusionary truths are what I’m referencing. Simplified, it basically means that when you joke about something enough, you start to believe it because of a cognitive bias. So, when you joke about black people being monkeys, the living situations of India, or the features of Asians, you are slowly deluding yourself into a state of false discrimination. With the way the internet works and Gen Z interacts, we tend to find a lot of things funny, making a joke out of serious situations. This mindset has slowly invited other people into minority safe spaces. This shift in perspective is shown in the big leap to conservatism among young men and voters, while Gen Z women and older members of the generation remain largely progressive.
With the current state of the world, I often get the thought that most people don’t actually care about each other. It’s unsettling to see the effects of “propaganda” and the repetition of events that mimic history. History is truly repeating itself. People are quick to turn a head and remove a helping hand, not realizing that even if it doesn’t affect them, it eventually will. The overwhelming desensitization of external and internalized racism across all communities is a harmful cycle that will soon affect us all. Now is the time to face the facts and realize that we’re all racist in some way, and as products of our environments, it’s our job to educate ourselves on the hate that lies within our everyday actions.
