Look, being stereotyped because you’re white can hurt. But it’s not the same as actual racism against people who have to deal with institutional oppression every day of their lives.

I feel like people go to extremes with this and either say “no, it’s fine and if it makes you feel bad then you’re pathetic” or “this is the same as using the N word”.

I think we’re all capable of more nuance than that. I think we’re capable of looking at the situation and saying “this can be hurtful sometimes, but that doesn’t make it the same as racism.”

We need to learn to express hurt in appropriate ways without pretending that a white person feeling bad is not the same as racial oppression.

Hell, I’ve had people dismiss me using the fact that I’m white in ways that I felt were really unfair. But it wasn’t oppression when that happened, it was just a couple people being assholes.

For example, someone brought up me being white in an insulting way when I was defending nonbinary people. In that case, the oppressive part was the transphobia, not the race thing.

I don’t remember what exactly they said, but it definitely didn’t have the same impact as if a white person calls a Black person the N word, for example.

It hurt because it was dismissive, but it didn’t have the weight of centuries of violence and oppression behind it.

I’ve also had antisemitic slurs used against me, and it’s a COMPLETELY different experience.

It’s not that you’re not allowed to feel hurt when somebody brings up your whiteness in a derogatory way, it’s that you shouldn’t compare it to actual racism.

The shit I’ve gotten regarding my whiteness has been in the neighbourhood of “shut up, pale face.” Mildly hurtful. The shit I’ve gotten for being Jewish is so much more intense. Somebody photoshopped a pic of me in a gas chamber.

There isn’t even an equivalent of that for whiteness, because nobody has really done anything like that to white people. There’s no history to draw from.