Better late than never, I suppose

This week has been a whirlwind of emotional heartbreak, confusion, and quite-frankly has left me absolutely dumbfounded on multiple occasions. To begin, it’s Halloween this weekend. So, it’s only necessary to confront the issue of costumes. I’m not pinpointing individuals who choose to show excess amounts of skin…No no, those are your own choices to represent your own body and your own personality. Hell, if you have the confidence to dress in such ways and withstand such weather then more support to ya! But, I’m looking at those who are choosing to disguise themselves into the skins of a different ethnic identity. The week, I’ve seen multiple posts all over my feed addressing the different sides of this argument. It’s those that are claiming “it’s just for a night” “not a big deal” because we are “no longer a racist society”, people are just “too sensitive” now-a-days and to get over “life not being far” etc etc etc are those that infuriate me. I’ve written a response to a particular post, but should be used as a response to all posts, even those i haven’t seen. So, let’s get to it. To those claims, I say this:

Our society is not different. We have not drastically changed. The way in which racism has been perpetuated and practiced has just changed. We live in a covertly racist society, where racism is under the table and not directly practiced. They are not just “trying to look like them” — they are making a joke out of looking like these groups of people, making fun of the identity of a person of color, re-iterating that their ‘culture’ is different and joke-able. It cannot be compared to Trump…he is a single individual. He, as an individual has made a claim to fully represent himself in whatever way he pleases. By dressing up as someone from another group, they are generalizing an entire population and group of individual people. Sure, maybe people aren’t thinking like this necessarily ever single time but it’s rooted from somewhere and that somewhere is racism. It’s being continually perpetuated through these costumes and there is no part of it that is okay.

We are not becoming “babies” or “too sensitive” it just happens to be that for the first time people are talking about and confronting societal justice issues around us. Millennials are speaking their voice and working for change. Just as I wouldn’t call you “too sensitive” for being upset when someone is making fun of you or you experiencing personal offense why would you ever call someone else that. Again, it stands for something that people are dressing up as under-represented groups that experience severe oppression on the DAILY BASIS in the majority of things they do (that, for the record, are pretty much the same things that you do they just experience it differently). Oppression is real. It’s heartbreaking. It’s happening. You cannot “act” oppressed for a night as a joke when people live a life that is constantly not in their favor….so to say that “you can’t always get your way” — try never having “your way”..Not even ‘your way’ but rather any way. Nothing is set up to ‘favor’ these groups of people. The entire U.S. system is set up to favor you and me and any other white citizen of this country. And it’s total and complete ignorance for you or anyone else to ignore this.