
They are c… to talk about racism as an idea, few seem able to address or transform their own racist behaviors. I constantly heard my colleagues use their academic training to speak articulately about systems and structures that uphold racism, but would stop short at recognizing that those systems aren’t just theoretical constructs. They are created and maintained by the choices that everyday people make to preserve their own comfort, ease and status.
This is an idea I like… but if this is the case, shouldn’t we be encouraging people to fixate less on the artificial constructs of gender and race—aka the “patriarchy” and the “white devil”? Both follow arbitrarily biological lines of categorisat…