Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics.
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I grew up in a country where there was no black people at all when I was born. It wasn't till much later that black people could be seen about in larger cities as students or tourists, usually a bit of a tourist attraction themselves.
Whenever I went to the west my parents always asked if I saw any {hard r n-word}s about. I don't think they even knew it was offensive.
I try my best as a progressive to be anti-racist, but I have no clue about black people honestly or what problems if any they face in the UK apart from discrimination by the police and home office, as people they seem alien and strange, and in London all PoC in general I saw seemed to have no interest in interacting outside of strictly religious/ethnic/national lines and i don't mind that, though it did make uni cliques seem more like ethnostates.
It is very difficult to be anti-racist if you fundamentally don't understand the struggles of the oppressed. Sometimes you can do more harm than good, despite your best intentions, simply because you have no knowledge of the issues.
The Ibram X. Kendi quote that spawned the idea (among white people) of anti-racism was a good one:
But as a Black man, he inevitably approached the subject from a bone-deep understanding of racism almost from birth. I think he failed to consider people who were so far removed from the struggles of Black people that they legitimately had no understanding of the issue.
I think that if you are ignorant of the issues, or have a surface-level understanding (the white college kids I mentioned in the OP), it is sometimes best to simply be nonracist rather than anti-racist...or perhaps better to be anti-racist in the sense of "I oppose the concept of racism". But this idea of "I must take action!!!" is...not terribly helpful if you have no idea what you're doing. It's like going to a poverty stricken neighborhood planning to build houses for the homeless, but you have no experience in carpentry or plumbing or roofing or anything. Your heart is in the right place, but please. Slow down. Take your cues from those who have lived through it.
True. To me it is this, and opposition to systemic structures that actively enable it, which often intersect with the same systems that enable other forms of oppression.
I firmly consider myself an ally. I do not know best, and I cannot really take action as I would not know what to do. I fully agree on that 👍