call it what it is.
Aug. 31st, 2005 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trocheeokay, it's starting to piss me off.
many have noted the difference in captioning between pictures of white people taking food from grocery stores in New Orleans [finding] and pictures of black people doing the same thing [looting].
In every dialog I've read, somebody jumps in to point out that the captions were written by different people, and some of them were from AP, and some were from AFP, or derail the conversation ("how brave the TV crews are"," "I contest the race of the participants", "It's all the media's fault", "perhaps it was an honest mistake").
The most offensive responses from defensive white folks run along the lines of "OMG how dare you [point out racism/write a letter]; it's talking about race that keeps racism alive", "unless Black folk explain why they [didn't leave town/stole beer] we can't call it racism" -- note that POC have to explain the actions of all POC in this one.
But none of these "explanations" [note scare quotes] hold water. [fuck off, I'm too irritated to find a better metaphor.]
Why the hell is there so much resistance from snotty whitefolk to the possibility that there is racism here? Lord knows, we don't have a race problem in this country and I don't know what people are thinking, casting aspersions like this. [/sarcasm] As these show, it doesn't matter who wrote them, it's still part of the institution. And it's not even accurate to attribute it to AP vs. AFP.
To repeat myself from a locked discussion:
If the captions were reversed, us white folks would have noticed. AFP vs AP is a difference, but why do we need to stretch so far? This stuff is part of a culture-wide institutional assumption of guilt for POC [er, people-of-color] and assumption of innocence for white folks. Let's acknowledge it and stop fucking trying to explain it away.
I think I'm going to resubscribe to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
debunkingwhite.
many have noted the difference in captioning between pictures of white people taking food from grocery stores in New Orleans [finding] and pictures of black people doing the same thing [looting].
In every dialog I've read, somebody jumps in to point out that the captions were written by different people, and some of them were from AP, and some were from AFP, or derail the conversation ("how brave the TV crews are"," "I contest the race of the participants", "It's all the media's fault", "perhaps it was an honest mistake").
The most offensive responses from defensive white folks run along the lines of "OMG how dare you [point out racism/write a letter]; it's talking about race that keeps racism alive", "unless Black folk explain why they [didn't leave town/stole beer] we can't call it racism" -- note that POC have to explain the actions of all POC in this one.
But none of these "explanations" [note scare quotes] hold water. [fuck off, I'm too irritated to find a better metaphor.]
Why the hell is there so much resistance from snotty whitefolk to the possibility that there is racism here? Lord knows, we don't have a race problem in this country and I don't know what people are thinking, casting aspersions like this. [/sarcasm] As these show, it doesn't matter who wrote them, it's still part of the institution. And it's not even accurate to attribute it to AP vs. AFP.
To repeat myself from a locked discussion:
It can be institutionalized racism, without anybody ever having the thought "I dislike/don't trust/hate black people." That only the snarky bloggers noticed it, and it goes unnoticed and/or excused by white folks, is what makes it racism.
If the captions were reversed, us white folks would have noticed. AFP vs AP is a difference, but why do we need to stretch so far? This stuff is part of a culture-wide institutional assumption of guilt for POC [er, people-of-color] and assumption of innocence for white folks. Let's acknowledge it and stop fucking trying to explain it away.
I think I'm going to resubscribe to
debunkingwhite.
