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My friend expressed an opinion to me today that reeked of white privilege. She stated that people in this current situation are "playing the race card" and that racism isn& #39;t even a problem in the world anymore. I don& #39;t know everything, but I wanted to educate her on what I do.
I wanted to do this because, as she might have racist thoughts along with every white person (sometimes without realising) she is mainly ignorant and we both grew up in this tiny white town with no cultural diversity, we have small town minds.
I told her that racism is a huge problem in the UK as well as the US. That the police will stop and search POC for no reason, that store detectives are more suspicious of them and many other situations I could think of
I told her that in the US 1 in 3 black men will go to prison and this is because of sickening racism in the justice system where for example a black man will get a much harsher sentence than a white man would for the same crime.
I explained that there is an institutional and systemic problem facing minority families, who are held down, repressed, denied good schools, jobs and safe neighbourhoods. How sometimes people resort to crime to feed their families and the cycle perpetuates itself again, it& #39;s sad.
As I was typing this she showed me screenshot of what she& #39;d already found and I told her Google will support any conspiracy theory but she needed a reputable news source or it is not valid and is unreliable.
She told me she doesn& #39;t trust main stream media. This friend is mentally ill and paranoid but I think it also shows what a great job Trump has done with his "fake news" rhetoric.
But I told her that if she was going to research, to do it on both sides. Find statistics on what percentage of people who are stopped and searched, received police brutality, or are incarcerated are POC. On the other side how many are MPs, CEOs...
How many black students do Cambridge and Oxford admit every year. I told her she would find this disproportionate. I asked her to read the blogs of black and minority activists as they could make this point far better than me but I am trying my best.
She came around to my way of thinking and promised me she would do fair research. I am writing this tweet because I believe white people can do better, that we should listen to every single voice we hear and consider it carefully, maybe there& #39;s hope of a better, fairer, future
She didn& #39;t know these things still went on and also I would like to state that I in no way think I know everything and all white people should be educated. If you are reading this and would like to make a point, please do so whatever it is.
