I just saw this headline on the new Yahoo! homepage*:
"Black officer supports Gates arrest."
Oh, because I'm not sure if you knew this, but if one, JUST ONE person of color doesn't think an incident is racist, then it's not. I mean, it totally doesn't matter if an overwhelmingly higher number of people of color do think the incident is racist. All it takes is for that one person to say, "No, guys, chill; what happened was totally okay and not racist at all," and then (magically) the incident isn't racist.
And all the white people point at all the people of color and say, "SEE, WE TOLD YOU," before returning to privileged, blind lives.
The President of the US believes there was racial profiling involved. The Governer of Massachusetts agrees. Actor Jeffrey Wright agrees.
I agree, too. I don't think this would have happened to a white person. And all this backlash is further evidence suggesting quite strongly that are nowhere near "postracial."
(There are similar problems, of course, with sexism, either where a sexist woman might say, "I'm a woman, and I thought the joke was funny and not sexist; therefore you are overreacting," or where a sexist guy might say, "My female friend thinks it's okay for guys to rape women if the women are wearing skimpy clothing, so you must be overreacting.")
* Why does Yahoo! keep doing this? No one uses the homepage anyway.
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I'm here in Massachusetts, and so are most of my Facebook friends - and random acquaintances who friended me - so I've been 'privileged' enough to see many of the "postracial" jokes that people have been making in regards to Gates' arrest. (People who know the officer, or other Cambridge officers, for example seem to think it's fine to say anything that pops into their head in 'defense' of their friend. Not realizing, of course, that they're doing the exact opposite.) It makes me wish there was a dislike button, instead of just a like one.
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