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Ok, a thread that is not about electoral politics but real life. Because this piece is an absolutely necessary read if you’re a white person who aspires to anti-racism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/noose-found-on-gunmans-locker-at-milwaukee-coors-facility-years-before-deadly-shooting/2020/03/04/9ac61d6a-5b75-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
Racism is not a toy. I know why I live in a world where I have to say that, but I hate it all the same. I hate that I have to explain how deeply violent and degrading it is to experience racism every day. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/noose-found-on-gunmans-locker-at-milwaukee-coors-facility-years-before-deadly-shooting/2020/03/04/9ac61d6a-5b75-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
Racism is not about feelings. I hate that I live in a world where I must parse out exactly how inhumane it is to experience violent retribution for being born. I hate that no one sees it as a problem of the human condition except those affected by it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/noose-found-on-gunmans-locker-at-milwaukee-coors-facility-years-before-deadly-shooting/2020/03/04/9ac61d6a-5b75-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
I hate how racism is ever only a problem for the perpetrator, and it is never measured in the art lost, the connections destroyed, the history bleached clean. I hate that even noticing the reality of this pain causes people to mute your voice. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/noose-found-on-gunmans-locker-at-milwaukee-coors-facility-years-before-deadly-shooting/2020/03/04/9ac61d6a-5b75-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
We ask so, so, so much of BIPOC in this country. It is painful to maintain double-consciousness, to be forced into the minds of our oppressors all the time, to see ourselves through that lens for sheer survival. It’s brutal, and it never ends. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/noose-found-on-gunmans-locker-at-milwaukee-coors-facility-years-before-deadly-shooting/2020/03/04/9ac61d6a-5b75-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
Racism is economic. It is about who gets resources and who does not, who is allowed to rise and who will determine culture, society, and violence. We are held hostage by racist work environments because it would ruin us to speak aloud. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/noose-found-on-gunmans-locker-at-milwaukee-coors-facility-years-before-deadly-shooting/2020/03/04/9ac61d6a-5b75-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
Racism is a force warping everything around us, so powerful that it feels like living in a room made entirely of funhouse mirrors. How long could any of us sustain it without snapping? https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/noose-found-on-gunmans-locker-at-milwaukee-coors-facility-years-before-deadly-shooting/2020/03/04/9ac61d6a-5b75-11ea-ab68-101ecfec2532_story.html
It sounds wild to say that racism is the core of this country to white people who wish it were anything else but race, anything else than this grave sin that can never truly be repaid. I know the gaping wound left inside the perpetrators. After all, my ancestors were white too.
