“My feelings were hurt”
I bet she never forgot a paper and pencils for the rest of her life.I’m sorry I agree with this exercise but not the commentary. As a white “blue - eyed” women I certainly don’t understand completely the experiences of every individual in this world (race, gender, religion, nationality, etc) The whole point of the exercise is to show people how oppressive society works, the environment it creates. To take someone from one environment to another radically different social environment can be traumatizing exercise or not. I have participated in these exercises before and they are frustrating, I am not defending anyone’s actions. I am not trying to be an apologist. I think these exercises are valid. Yet to mock someone for their response? It makes you no better than the oppressors that this whole exercise condemns. You are creating and perpetuating the system.
So do you think it is not traumatizing for this to be a lived experience? Or is it not traumatizing because PoC have long ago learned tears don’t help and can often make situations worse. Or is it not traumatizing because it happens to PoC. Do you think PoC are not daily criticized for the way they respond to things? For the way they behave? For the way they choose to dress on any given day?
You are creating and perpetuating the system.
Care to explain why laughing at one white girl getting her feelings hurt and crying in the middle of what she knows is an exercise and she will be getting college credit for is creating and perpetuating a system that has for centuries been used exclusively to oppress and annihilate PoC?
Or is that expression just a white person platitude, always playing the victim
Personal disclosure time.
Some 3 years ago, I brought up racism in a discussion about a communal living space I was part of, and one of the White folks running the show said, “We already know this stuff.”
It was the only time I ever cried about racism in public. I was surrounded by White folks. Do you know how many people actually comforted me? One. Know how many people gave the person who made me cry hell for how they treated me? Zero.
There I was, someone who is emotionally very reserved, balling my eyes out in public about racism. And only one person intervened to comfort me. Nobody took the perpetrator to task for their behavior.
This was not the first time a White person has humiliated me in public because they didn’t approve of what I was saying. This was not the first time people sat idly by and let things like that happen to me without so much as a, “Man that was fucked up” thrown in my direction. These were people I’d considered my fucking friends. These were people I thought liked me and respected me as a person. And they did this to me or allowed it to happen without comment.
Yet let some White chick get the sniffles around me, and suddenly I’m this big mean scary angry crazy evil Black bitch who needs to be put in her place.
So as far as feelings getting hurt and all that shit? Spare me.
(Source: eshusplayground, via tsotchke)
