I remember Roseanne on Colbert promoting reboot. She was a bit unhinged there in her pro-trump position. I don't think she is a racist, she is just dumb and folksy and hates establishment which she equates with democrats only.
No, and this is precisely the problem that she, Derec, and many others simply do not understand, or refuse to accept. One does not have to be wearing a hood and burning crosses in some poor family's front yard to be a racist. We are all racist to some degree, and put simply, some of us are more open-minded and introspective or possess more empathy in order to realize it. Also, and I think this cannot be overstated, one doesn't have to
feel a burning hatred in their heart for non-whites as a white person, in order to be identified as a racist.
If you feel righteously indignant anger for being accused of racism to the degree that you are always busy defending your behavior you will not see your own racism or your own privilege. It's simply another sort of mental bias. People feel justified in holding this bias for a variety of reasons, like feeling like they earned their place in society, as opposed to privilege and luck having a greater influence on their success than they would like. These two, racism and feeling like one earned their place, is so hand in glove they are barely indistinguishable anymore.
This is a byproduct of living in the society we live in, and it takes careful consideration and courage to admit to it. It is as ingrained certain aspects of gender, and I have yet to meet a racist that has no issues with gender in today's society, why could that be? Because it's two sides of the same coin. My little girl is 8. Yesterday she said she was a tomboy. I asked her why. She said (paraphrasing here) that it's because she likes physical play, science, and dinosaurs. I myself do not consider those "male" traits, and I did not raise her that way, nevertheless, because of the society she lives in, she got the idea in her head that those are things for boys. This is a perfect example of how the society we live in influences us without us even realizing it.
<Personal references to another board member deleted--Staff edit> Of course, various other people of color were raised in
their society as a subsection of ours, and instead of acknowledging that, they expect people of color to think, act and behave as if they were raised in ours alone. They fail to understand that these expectations are the very definition of racism. It denies people of color their own experiences and invalidates that lived experience.
Some of us realize that we as white people benefit from a society with pre-baked views like that, even if we don't support it. Even if we had no hand in creating it. Yet, if we want to change, if we want an even playing field for all, we have to admit to these things. Acknowledging that is difficult. To believe that your life's circumstances are due entirely to your own good or bad choices in that life when the largest determination of success is how wealthy your parents were is absurd. We live in a society where wealth trickles down through families over time. This is simply undeniable. Exceptions only prove the rule here. The fact that people of color were
severely denied opportunity, housing and wealth in the past is also undeniable. Yet, many white people expect people of color to pull hard on those bootstraps and not acknowledge that those terrible past acts currently affect the present, in both social attitudes and concrete accumulated wealth. They have blinders on while they insist that everyone else is just making these concepts up because they literally like to feel guilty. It would be comical if it didn't perpetuate so much damage.
