A thread for my black friends:

Via the nature of my job and where I was raised, I wager I've been exposed to more actual open racism (decades) than the majority of my white peers. I want to equip you with a potentially deeper understanding of white silence to help reduce it. 1/?

Quick bg: I've worked the lower and upper levels of one of USA's largest country music festivals all my life + my school was historically 99.9% white. It's forgivable to assume it'd be a hotbed for racism. It's really like many things: 90% good, 10% awful. Let me dissect.. 2/?

Sadly the 10% may never change. Easy way to identify active is they'll become visually heated if you cause them cognitive dissonance over casual racist jokes, sweeping opinions of minorities, legacy brainwashing, segregation values, etc.

But there's big problems with the 90% 3/?

Fear. Driven. Passive. Racism. Be it lack of exposure to minorities, creeping influence from the 10%, media (huge), subconscious aversion to darker color value...whatever. Many white people who have never met you still get struck like a bucket of water when they see you. 4/?

It's important to know a huge batch of this 90% are raised where minorities are basically chimeras until migrating to cities. At that point there's so much stigma that one bad experience with a black person can tip the scales to a negative association with your entire race. 5/?

You shouldn't have to baby whites into seeing you as humans, it's on them to overcome. Just also know they likely have isolated opinions working against them through their entire development. Most people don't escape towns like mine feeling all Jedi about race. 6/?

7/? So strap in. Here are some terrible reasons well-meaning whites stay silent:
- They are cowed from years of uncle Jeb ripping on black people at xmas while influential people like parents/peers fail to step in
- Black crowds = danger has been forever enforced in them. 8/?

- Their shitty network of Facebook relatives/childhood friends will give them flak over minority support posts
- They're afraid they'll say the wrong thing even in solidarity and offend you
- They can't let go of the notion that helping you might harm their social position. 9/?

- They are exposed almost exclusively to the negative parts of your culture and none of the positive
- They weren't taught enough empathy to validate your frustrations over police targeting as it never happened to them
- ^ Similarly financial stability 10/?

- They've come to believe blacks are encouraging racism towards whites en masse and that grouping with their own kind is safest (they took 4chan seriously)
- They've never made a black friend and can't work out how to virtue signal without that key element. 11/?

Anyway, 90%-10% is just a descriptor. Point is I've been close to a systemically fucked up group of "heartland" USA for ages and if exposing helps 1 minority suss out/alleviate irrational white fear or inspires 1 white to speak up in solidarity, worth it

Miss my mocha mates