Now, get on with your life, such as that is.d
Saturday, July 11, 2020
Just so you know …
… (6) Titania McGrath on Twitter: "IMPORTANT THREAD — Brave social justice activists such as myself are working tirelessly to expose *all* the racist elements within our society. Sometimes it is difficult to keep up, so I thought it would be helpful to curate a comprehensive list..." / Twitter. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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I'm not sure the point. Let's all get on with our racism, such as it is?
ReplyDeleteWhen we consider the sundry things that Titania McGrath lists, we see how racism permeates so much of our lives. It's not okay just because it is endemic. Pointing it out, then, doesn't excuse it. It's something to be horrified at.
It's not just endemic in so many all-white groups we have all encountered, in which it is par for the course to call people of color "N****r" behind their backs and too the faces -- even if you or I were not the ones doing it, just standing by accepting it. It's not just bad cops killing unarmed young blacks. No. That's horrific enough. It's everywhere, as McGrath point out. But being everywhere does not make it okay. It makes it worse that it is so endemic.
It's like we are cement. We've been mixed up and set. And the argument it, now that we are mixed up and set, then we should just go about our business this ignorant and cruel way.
I was glad to see "Band Aids" on the list. The company just came out, after all these years, with better-colored bandages, to match the different flesh colors of people. We have a different brand in the medicine cabinet, but it is there, because people who get cuts don't all have beige/tan skin. It only makes sense that if we need to put a bandage on, especially on a child, or even on Mary, that it is more than just a courtesy to have the proper color, but it would be racistly rude not to keep such a supply on hand. I do not like the word, but it fits here: "Duh!"
Which reminds me, what's missing from the list, is how Crayola had a "flesh" colored crayon. Imagine being a kid, and you take out the "flesh" crayon, and it is nothing like your flesh, but a color Crayola thinks skin should look like in drawings. What if they had a black CEO at the time, who issued the flesh colored crayon to be dark brown? There is something so arrogant and even hurtful in a crayon company doing that. I'd like to think it was done out of insensitive ignorance, versus a racist wish for the cruel effect, but corrections need to take place, as soon as possible, no matter how vast the scope of racism, no matter how endemic.
Band-aids and crayons are nothing to be horrified by during waking hours. If you're having a nightmare about these things, when you wake up and stop shuddering I hope you will smile and regain your sense of proportion.
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