NO, you won’t be calling racism a disease or a mental illness.
Words from your friendly neighborhood chronically ill, neuro-divergent WOC. CW-Language
Normally I write daily and publish or send work out to publications about three times per week. This past Monday found me with deadlines, scheduled posts as well as a pressing rant I wanted to write and by Tuesday I only had the creative energy to put together press releases for art shows.
Realizing I need self care almost as much as I need to spend time renovating Art Mart I turned off social media notifications, decided to stay off writing for a few days and instead focus on making my body feel better amidst a flare up, as well as working as much as I can cleaning our warehouses.
Thursday I had a nice mental health day: spent a lot of time cleaning AM, walking the dog and in the afternoon, I went to a QTPOC Happy Hour meet up. I knew I should have stayed off of social media. Because I encountered a two-fer of problematic shit excuse for ideas that keep getting play time. Thinkpieces, videos and way too much discussion is being made as of lately in which too much emphasis on empathy for nazi sympathizers is put.
Many liberals argue that the problem lies in the educational system, or class systems and many speculate abusive childhoods, drug or alcohol dependency are to blame for racism. The most useless lot of liberals are the ones that equate mental illness or a disease and as someone whose both physical and mental health issues which have been affected By motherfucking American racism for almost twenty years, I am going to need you to stop. Full Stop.
Racism isn’t a disease that a few scientist over at a well-funded lab can eradicate with a simple vaccine. But if that were the case, we would still be shit out of luck because some of the same white folks that claim that racism doesn’t exist therefore it is not a problem that needs addressing do not believe that vaccines are even good and effective against preventable diseases. You think they’re gonna get a rabid racist vaccine? Even if hospitals gave it for free they would call it socialist mind control or some other half baked Illuminati mind control 666 type conspiracy. I dare go as far as to say that this (un)original all natural neuro-typical trash would not swallow a prescription pill for racism anymore than would do for depression. Even if they themselves or loved ones, in their lowest moments need these, they rather share passive aggressive social media posts, projections in meme form: with pictures of green mountains and a handful of pills, the aforementioned with captions like this is nature’s anti depressants, and calling precious, life saving prescription meds shit. These are the same type of people whom share the views that racism is like a mental illness and not a complex system of societal, economic, governmental structures set up to disenfranchise a group of people to benefit another group.
The lives of ND people are stigmatized, fetishized and romanticized for NT people to enjoy: Our suffering oftentimes dramatically enhanced for entertainment value or to teach “normal” people a lesson about themselves. Our struggles and dignity are easy picking and overall we are the butt of all jokes, case in point: there was a whole month of memes last year dedicated to punching down both SJW and trigger warnings in one. Horror movies depict us as a menace to society. Loaded words like “Crazy” “pyscho” “over sensitive” words oftentimes used to silence our cries or to label us unwanted are so worn down that they still hold power for NT people to gaslight ND people with, yet they’re also so overused they’ve become meaningless sentence enhancers and easy descriptors for things. NT people need to learn as with everything else in life, that intersectionality is key to approaching other humans and that we all experience neuro-divergence differently based on a million different factors, yes some racists are mentally or physically ill but racism isn’t a mental illness and it is not a disease it is a complex, centuries old system and it is a privilege that NT people have to pass such uninformed, damaging ideology. To lump mentally ill or sick people of color in a bag with hateful bigots for NT people to address without so much as our input does nothing but further stigmatizes our standing in society. So again, stop and be better by informing yourself, listening and becoming a good ally!
