Hey there, I was wondering if I’m the only one who feels like this or not.
So I grew up thinking that we people all look different and never had a concept of something such as “white” and “black” people.
But especially in the last years I noticed more and more that a lot of people make such a big thing out of whether someone is “black” or “white” and what their ethnicity is.
It feels like it’s to the point where they make this define their core identity as if it’s very relevant how people look and how bright/dark their skin is as if this changes their personality.
It’s like so many of these people constantly bring this up to the point where it’s brainwashing and they literally even use racial slur as slang that was used in the past to devalue and enslave people based on their skin tone.
Since I experienced this it made me very uncomfortable since I never had this concept before and now I constantly have to obsessively think about it and feel like it’s manipulating me and these people still bring it up all the time.
I think this is driving me insane cause I never would think about humans so strongly because of their skin or something since it simply isn’t relevant and it just feels wrong but I can’t escape it since so many people continue to make such a big deal out of it.
Edit: To the people saying people have different advantages because of their skin, I’m fully aware of that and I wasn’t intending to debate that. My question was primarily about if other people have the same uncomfortable feeling that many people differentiate between people based on their skin and make such a big deal out of it (so more a personal feelings question than a generale debate about why it exists) because imo in a healthy society this shouldn’t be the case. But in my opinion the fact that we continue this behaviour instead of changing it is the exact reason we have racism and the issues of inequality based on someone’s skin in the first place. We need to start to change at some place and not just give up on it. If we continue to see people as “black” or “white” instead of just seeing them as “people” and only look at the past we will never end this issue. Ignorance is certainly not the solution. I found these videos where I think Elon Musk and Morgan Freeman are pretty much hitting the nail on the head.
Answer: you’re white, right? Few people who experience growing up black in America come away saying “what’s the big deal about race, anyway?”
If you want to know what the big deal is with being black, there’s wonderful tradition in American literature of telling you all about it. Pick up a copy of Black Boy by Richard Wright for a place to start.
Why are people making more of a thing out of it than they were 10 years ago? Well, my personal view is that the whole “just don’t talk about it and it will go away” has not worked. And has that ever worked for anything?
People say that everyone has the same opportunities now. But life outcomes for white and black people are statistically quite different and it’s due to more than just talking about race. So I think people are getting sick of being quiet about something that clearly matters, and are talking about it openly. Others are responding by saying that talking about it is the entire problem and is, itself, racist. This is about the dumbest shit ever IMHO but some people are just really sick of having to hear about it and as a sheltered white person you have little personal reason to care. That is unless you care about other people.
White people who are sick of hearing about it loooove that Morgan Freeman video. They love it. It tells them just what they want to hear. But one extemporaneous comment by a celebrity does not make a thorough analysis of the topic that works for everyone. So yeah, sorry about that.
In other words, being able to choose to disregard the concept of race is itself an expression of privilege.
In a perfect world where everybody had that attitude, it would be the right attitude to have. But as long as some people continue to not only regard it but also use it as a tool to discriminate and oppress, their victims do not have a choice but to regard it also. To tell minorities they shouldn’t care about race is to deny them the means to describe how they’ve been wronged.
I would be genuinely interested to see what Freeman now thinks of that 16 (or more?) year old clip. While I don’t in any way question his experience or opinion, I think in some way that mindset was very much a (perhaps necessary) product of its time where color-blindness was considered to be the whole picture rather than a smaller bandaid solution of limited efficacy in the context of a holistic healing process.