Today I was scrolling through Tumblr when I came across a post that said this:
“Sick to death of hearing of hearing how WHITE PEOPLE being blamed for everything negative in this WORLD ! Please move on
P.S Im not saying forget what happened to different people by race but stop blaming people for the past when my generation did nothing!!”
While I understand the sentiment here that not all white people are bad, this post rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t know if you’re just not educated enough or perhaps not exposed to these issues, but saying something like this kind of shows the sense entitlement many people of our generation has.
Yes, it’s true that we shouldn’t blame Caucasians for everything, but you have to consider the fact that they are still the majority that controls things like the economy, the workplace and the media.
And saying that your generation doesn’t contribute to some of the racism that goes on right now? Well, that’s a big statement to make.
A huge thing right now is something called “Hipster racism“, which according to 2006 article by Carmen Van Kerckhove, is described as the use of irony and satire to mask racism. So for example, if someone says something that is blatantly offensive and racist in an attempt to be controversial, that is what hipster racism is.
Another example of hipster racism is the appropriation of cultural artifacts like wearing native headdresses and using blackface as a way to act out racial stereotypes because it “appears cool.”
I know for a fact that a lot of these things are happening within people my age. Like whenever I hear someone trying to act all ‘gangster’ and ‘hood’ when they have no idea what it’s like to live like that (aka really bad parodies of Drake’s ‘Started From the Bottom’), all I want to do is hurl.
But how can I blame them when artists like Lana Del Rey and movies like Cloud Atlas are making it seem like it’s OKAY?
I’m sure their intentions are probably not meant to be bad ones, but the media is still pretty racist, insensitive and ignorant. If only people went out and educated themselves once in a while, this could possibly be stopped much sooner.
I know this sounds like a fairly easy thing to do, but apparently it’s really hard. Movies and music continue to appropriate and give narrow stereotypes to cultures and passing them off as ‘feel good fare’ that makes the white people look like heroes.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well perhaps you should watch the movies Argo, The Help and Pocahontas to see what I mean.
Hopefully in the future, I can address more things that have been bothering me in terms of racial issues. But in the meantime, here are some intro articles to help you educate yourself.
Samantha Lui 
I see this around my campus and it’s pretty gross. During Halloween, there was a guy who had blackface because he thought it was funny. I told him it’s offensive and he went on in a rant about “It’s not serious”,”people don’t think it’s racist now. Calm down”, etc.
I can’t.
Ugh. I’m sorry he had the nerve to even say that to you. I hate how people think it’s OK to do things like this because they think society has already evolved into a place that is completely accepting of different races. But it’s because they keep doing things like “blackface”, “yellowface” etc in attempts to be “ironic” and “funny” just shows that racism is still going on today.