Institutionalized, not individual

As an upper-class white American, I grew up in the inevitably permeable bubble of suburbia.

As an upper-class white American, I grew up in the inevitably permeable bubble of suburbia. Words like racism, sexism, discrimination, and prejudice snuck into my sheltered world.

But when adults define those -isms, they grossly oversimplify it, whether because of a base misunderstanding of their own from a perpetual cycle, or because they wanted to hide the truth from a bunch of privileged kids. We learn that “racism” means “hating people because of their race”, and “sexism” means “hating people because of their sex”.

These definitions are why 1) people insist and believe that they are not racist or sexist while doing extremely racist or sexist things, and 2) people think there’s such thing as reverse racism, or misandry, or heterophobia, or cisphobia, or whatever contrived discrimination these privileged people come up with when faced with hate from an oppressed group.

People insist that they are not racist or sexist while doing extremely racist or sexist things

There are a large number of people who honestly believe that, if they just plain don’t have a problem with Native American people, they can’t be racist, even if they are writing a musical for fifth graders about a fictional Native American village called “Lenapo” (which sounds remarkably similar to the name of the Lenape tribe that once lived in the state and for whom a nearby high school is named), in which all of the actors dress in Pocahontas-style abominations of imitation costumes, with feathers in our headbands and Chief Clearwater wearing a war bonnet colored with cheap paint in all of the standard colors of the rainbow and the Medicine Man/Shaman (he was referred to as both interchangeably throughout the show) waving a rattle to work his “magic”, all to differentiate them from the White Men who show up with shotguns to kill their land’s buffalo, but in an apologetic wish-fulfillment, are thwarted by the peaceful protest of the Lenapo people.

She was a devoted, white, suburban mom, wonderful with children, and the face of uninformed racism. It took me eight years to realize that what we had done as a fifth grade class was abhorrent cultural appropriation on a massive scale.

This is the plane in which the “I have black/gay/trans friends” argument exists. These people don’t look at their black/gay/trans friend as a license to be say and do discriminatory things. The calls of discrimination come completely as a surprise to their perpetrator because they misunderstand the definition of prejudice. A friend is just proof they can offer to someone they are sure is misreading the situation.

Pro-tip: anyone who actually calls someone out for being prejudiced is never misreading the situation, unless they belong to the next group of unfortunate humans.

People think there’s such thing as reverse discrimination

When you think that prejudice is the act of hating a type of human, you may be easily confused when you see a minority saying that they hate their oppressor. When an Asian person says “I hate white people”, when a woman says “Men are useless”, when a trans person says “Kill all cis people”, a misinformed white/male/cis person may mistake this as reverse discrimination.

Reverse discrimination does not and cannot exist. Hate like this may hurt your feelings, but rather than invalidating all prejudice ever by claiming these remarks are evidence of reverse discrimination, you must realize that all you are looking at is one angry person who has been severely mistreated by the group that they referenced in their mass hatred. You must realize that these people don’t have the privilege of feeling safe when they walk around at night because of extremists in the demographic that you belong to. Realize that these people’s very existence is mocked and invalidated by the contrived world displayed by the media. You must realize that these people consistently lose opportunities to people from your demographic simply because they don’t belong to that demographic — and you must realize that the opportunities you may lose to them because of affirmative action or other exclusionary standards are far, far fewer than the opportunities their people have lost to your people.

Then hold back your hurt feelings and decide you don’t need to bring any more negativity to this marginalized person’s life. You can deal with someone saying something mean about your group. It’s not like they’ll actually go through with anything mindlessly harmful, unlike some of the members of your group.