On racism and colour-blindness

[ailbhe]

I think this is one of the best - and funniest - explanations I've seen.

ETA: I got the link from ljgeoff.

Comments

[djm4]

Yes, that's great; thanks so much for the link.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

That's a great piece of writing (I didn't find it especially funny but that might just be me).

That's the same logic by which HRC supporters were being called sexist last year. The difference? That one didn't raise any eyebrows.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Seriously? It raised a lot of eyebrows from where I was sitting. And if the colour-blindness idea wasn't a widespread problem, people wouldn't need to write posts about it.

This sounds a little bit like "sexism is worse than racism".

[ailbhe]

A lot depends on which bits of the internet you were in at the time; I saw a lot of raised eyebrows about the HRC thing but until today I wasn't even really aware that there was a discussion of race in SFF going on which was making my friends get all excited and upset, because I just wasn't reading friendsfriends enough.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

Um, am I misunderstanding you, or are you inferring from my comment that I judge sexism to be a worse "offense" than racism?

Either way and for the record and to whom it may or may not concern, I don't believe in a hierarchy of thought crimes.

Sexism is bad, racism is bad, xenophobia is bad, antisemitism I have particular reason to believe is not a very good idea at all. They're all equally destructive to society and blight individual lives in equal degree.

I just think that one of the things that the US showed the world last year is that while it's ready to tackle one head on, the other is not up for discussion so much right now. Yet.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I think that's very much a matter of where you're standing: I heard a lot of people active in race politics say the opposite, and there are certain issues where tackling sexism head-on is way, way more straightforward than the tackling racism head-on. There was some absolutely appalling racism from Clinton's supporters, for a start: second-wave white feminist co-opting black women's identity and just awful things like that.

I think if you count Obama's selection over Clinton as a victory for anti-racism and a defeat for anti-sexism, you're playing into exactly the kind of divide-and-rule tactics that hurt us all.

[ailbhe]

I'd be surprised if that's what she's doing, but I'll let her speak for herself. I think you're both on the same side, but it's a big side.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

That was an awesome post indeed, and I have saved the link for future smitination use.