stirdrawsandreblaws:

grohiikzeymah:

ok so. as a white person, it’s not my place to talk over poc. however, I do make it a goal to educate where i can and shut down bs when i see it, so i’ll go ahead and cite some things for you

now, because the definition of racism i quoted as defined in my first response was written by kali tal, who (while an outspoken intersectional feminist since the 80s who has done fuckloads of pieces on historical revisionism and is A+ at calling white people out on their shit) is white, i figured you should hear the definitions along the same lines from other poc, especially black people

SO. i should note that the grounds for that definition probably came from spike lee during either an interview in 1990: “Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing … then it will be done, but not until then.”

might have been helped along by something from another interview in 1991: “Black people can’t be racist. Racism is an institution. Black people don’t have the power to keep hundreds of people from getting jobs or the vote. Black people didn’t bring nobody over in boats. They had to add shit to the Constitution so we could get the vote. Affirmative action is about finished in this country now. It’s through. And black people had nothing to do with that, those kinds of decisions. So how can black people be racist when that’s the standard? Now, black people can be prejudiced. Shit, everybody’s prejudiced about something.”

got that info from an article by Clarence Page that you are free to peruse

also here’s chescaleigh, sistah vegan (who also had this little gem: I also want to remind people of this: just because someone comments on a blog and claims to be a certain identity, doesn’t mean it is true. For example, anyone can come on here claiming to be a Black woman who doesn’t believe that racism exists when in reality, they could be a bored 12 year old boy using their spare time to troll. and i’m just squinting really hard at you rn grohiikzeymah) and my personal fave marfmellow, who also addresses the concept of lateral racism

since I’m dumping informative links, here’s a bonus short piece on why it’s important to keep the focus on sexual violence attention directed at women and girls, written by a black man under the username BeingHuman

and (this one’s by a white person, but) for white folks reading this that might need it: Racism 101 for Clueless White People, Written by a Slightly Less Clueless White Person