i describe it as “slipping into” bc people put on the dialect at very specific times for very specific reasons. train yourself to see it. look at these viral posts and think about
what these people or characters are trying to portray and
how the intended characteristics correlate to identifiable antiblack stereotypes (the answers are at the bottom)
a.
b.
c.
d.
a) sassy, loud, hysterical, confrontational; b) vocally lascivious; c) animalistic, dirty, barbaric, savage, uncivilized, unsophisticated, unhygienic, rude; d) sexually predatory
This racist white Martha decided she would harass two Latinas speaking Spanish and TANYA IS NOT HAVING IT TODAY!!!
C’mon now Ellen! You better put Susan in her place and do some heavy lifting to make up for your 53% sistren!
I have never in my life felt so blessed by hearing a white woman say “I’m calling the cops!” This is the only Bethanny I want near me; use your cop-calling superpowers for good, not evil.
The white woman who helped the women being harassed is Kamira Trent. The incident occurred in Rifle, Colorado.
The racist harassing two innocent women for speaking Spanish is Linda Dwire. After Trent rightly called the police to report Dwire’s threatening behavior and harassment, Dwire was arrested and charged with two counts of bias-motivated harassment. She maintains that she is not racist, just “patriotic” and believes that immigrants should be required to learn English to “prove” they “love” America enough to live here, and states that she frequently confronts random people in public for speaking languages other than English.
I think for a lot of white people, when you call them out on their casual racism (microagressions and non-overt things), they see it as a case of hurt feelings from your point of view as opposed to a discussion of harmful practices that aid the vehicle of racism. So in response, they take it as a personal attack, rather than a learning experience, and go on the defensive by bringing up a time that you made them upset as leverage. Or they defend their actions by doubling down on the behavior at hand and dismissing your criticism as over sensitivity and emphasizing their “harmless” intent. And I think that is one of the reasons why it’s so hard to address casual and interpersonal racism with the general white population (and also other poc tbh).
I think white people NEED to read this and let it sink way deep down inside them.
O Yes? Do they come on horses with rifles, and say, Ese gringo, gimmee your job? And do you, gringo, take off your ring, drop your wallet into a blanket spread over the ground, and walk away?
I hear Mexicans are taking your jobs away. Do they sneak into town at night, and as you’re walking home with a whore, do they mug you, a knife at your throat, saying, I want your job? Even on TV, an asthmatic leader crawls turtle heavy, leaning on an assistant, and from a nest of wrinkles on his face, a tongue paddles through flashing waves of lightbulbs, of cameramen, rasping “They’re taking our jobs away.” Well, I’ve gone about trying to find them, asking just where the hell are these fighters.
The rifles I hear sound in the night are white farmers shooting blacks and browns whose ribs I see jutting out and starving children, I see the poor marching for a little work, I see small white farmers selling out to clean-suited farmers living in New York, who’ve never been on a farm, don’t know the look of a hoof or a the smell of a woman’s body bending all day long in fields. I see this, and I hear only a few people got all the money in this world, the rest count their pennies to buy bread and butter.
Below that cool green sea of money, millions and millions of people fight to live, search for pearls in the darkest depths of their dreams, hold their breath for years trying to cross poverty to just having something. The children are dead already. We are killing them, that is what America should be saying; on TV, in the streets, in offices, should be saying, “We aren’t giving the children a chance to live.” Mexicans are taking our jobs, they say instead. What they really say is, let them die, and the children too.
Pass Through Fire 