Thread by @Manigarm

Racism and White Supremacy in 2019: Thoughts on the Incident

(Buckle up, this might get long.)

It is probably fairly obvious to all of you by now that the recent incident of the racist MAGA teen at the Indigenous Peoples' Day March hit a nerve with me.

Now that I have had some time to process the events and watch the continuing coverage unfold, there is one primary lesson I want to leave everyone with (for thought, for discussion, for whatever) and it is this: This is modern racism.

This kid is probably one of the most privileged types of people out there and he has absolutely no concept of it. He is a racist, whether he thinks he is or not. And here's why.

For a large number of white Baby Boomers and somewhat after, there is a belief that racism is over. That it ended back in 1967 when Jim Crow laws were finally deemed unconstitutional and desegregation became a reality.

In short, that racism ended with the last "Whites Only" sign being taken down from a water fountain and the last Indian School closed. This is because, their understanding and idea of racism is a legal one. If it doesn't exist in the law, it doesn't exist at all.

As a result, many of them remain willfully ignorant of broadly cultural, systemic, or historic inequalities because these injustices don't fit with a "personal responsibility" narrative.

This is also why so many of them choose to remain blind to ongoing legacies as well as modern iterations of colonialism, racism, and misogyny that directly impact the lives and livelihoods of women, people of color, Indigenous peoples, and the LGBTQ community.

Because, again, these problems don't fit the belief that all they have achieved is by personal merit alone ("hard work," and lots of "boot strap pulling").

They don't want to believe that social and political contexts in this country have routinely favored them to the detriment of others.

They don't want to believe that there was any other hand in their successes other than their own.

And for those who haven't been as successful, it has become all too easy to co-opt the language of civil rights to claim that other people wanting equality is the only possible reason they have failed...

...(i.e, Feminism, Affirmative Action, Socialism, and the ever-nonsensical phrase Cultural Marxism). They would have been successful all along, if someone (read: undeserving) hadn't stolen it from them.

This is the narrative these boys have been raised on. No, their parents probably didn't ever tell them that black people should use different bathrooms or that Native Americans should be exterminated.

They didn't have to. They told them that the reason they had so many privileges and opportunities was **because of who they are** and not what other people have done for them or what other people have lost to a culture that favors them over others.

If black people weren't as successful, well then, there must be something wrong with black people. If women were having problems securing equal opportunities, it must be because there was something wrong with women...

...If Indigenous Peoples and their children were falling behind, well then, they just needed to get with the program. Because systemic racism, misogyny, and bigotry don't exist for them.

These kids were acting out what they were taught. By their parents, their school, and their community. With every snide remark about "Mexicans" taking jobs, or "terrorist" Arabs, or "lazy" African Americans, or "sluts" and their birth control...

...or "gross" gays and "dangerous" transpeople.

They have been taught that women should be punished for sex and that sexual misconduct is never their fault. They have been taught that anyone who is different from them is worthy of mockery, derision, disrespect, and all too often, violence.

Because, after all, being different (and implied therefore not as good as them) is the other persons fault. They deserve the bad things that happen to them because they are bad people.

This is racism in 2019.

For these Catholic school boys, this mob-bullying is probably a 'normal' occurrence. It happens all the time. Sometimes it is directed at the gay kid in the locker room, sometimes it is directed at the woman protesting for her reproductive rights...

...and a few days ago it was directed at an Indigenous Omaha elder and Vietnam veteran as he sang a healing song on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

And for everyone currently scrambling their brains to figure out a way to give this kid a pass....you are doing him, and all those like him, no favors. His parents are telling him, his chaperones were telling him, his classmates were telling him, his Church is telling him...

...you're telling him, that he gets to be racist and we'll make sure there are no consequences for that.

And people are doing this, not because they are afraid that he will face consequences, but out of fear that they might. That if this kid's actions were racist, then so might their's be. If this kid faces consequences for his actions, then there might be consequences for them too.

Because they cannot, will not, ever ever ever look at themselves and ask: Are my beliefs racist? Do my beliefs hurt people? Are the things I value complicated by misogyny or bigotry? Do I have to change?

This teenage boy mocked an elder because he thought it was funny. In fact, he may even have believed it laudable ("owning the libs, amirite?"). He has never, himself, experienced racial hate or gender discrimination. He probably doesn't know anyone intimately who has.

He believed he would get away with tomahawk gestures, and fake Native chants, and that smug entitled little smile and go back to snickering with his friends, because to him, it was no big deal.

He easily hurts others because he has never had to face the reality of that hurt himself. Because he believes that *those* people are worthy of ridicule for the crime of not being like him.

All of his privileges, his good private school, his clothes, the food he eats, the college and job opportunities he will have, are, in his mind, deserved and, in no way, does he see them coming from a history, a legacy, a reality of prejudice, erasure, and violence.

That is racism in 2019.

He is a racist.