Response
hi guys pls dni if you think white people can experience racism
Comment
Reactions
Replies
This is pretty much accurate, but also kind of reads like racism is just when you've experienced racial prejudice consistently for a long time, which isn't quite accurate either.
When academics say racism is systemic, and white people don't experience it, what they mean is that racism is a feature ingrained into our society and its power structures. Racism isn't just a lot of individuals who think all BIPOCs are bad, it's a set of inter-related social problems that, by design or simply out of convenience, end up making non-white people's lives worse.
Examples: in the US, police are more likely to harass black people and courts tend to give them more severe sentences for the same crime; regions with a lot of non-white residents tend to have higher poverty rates and lower property values; the same regions tend to receive less attention from developers, and when they do, it often results in the cost of living becoming impossible for residents to meet. These problems will continue even if everyone involved believes in racial equality; ending them requires active collective effort in order to overcome social inertia, deal with the legacy of previous decisions, and question one's biases. And systemic racism also makes it convenient for white people in power to be explicitly racist, because creating racialized enemies is a very easy way to justify unethical consolidation of power.
(Disclaimer: I'm white, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. If a non-white person gives a well-reasoned explanation, it should supersede mine.)
For anyone who'd like to know, here's the difference between racism and racial prejudice! Racism is systematic, and comes from generations of harassment and intolerance to the people of a certain race. Saying, "all BIPOCs are bad" would be an example of racism because it plays into all of the intolerance that has occurred against BIPOCs. Racial prejudice can be experienced by anyone. Saying "all White people are bad" would be racial prejudice. White people don't have a history of persecution and intolerance. Therefore, the statement is not racist because it is not systematic. It is prejudice. Keep in mind that BOTH ARE 100% WRONG!! However, saying that White people can experience racism devalues and invalidates the horrible experiences that BIPOC have had over the years.
(Hoping this is somewhat coherent at least ahaha)