I don't understand this Uncle Tom/Clayton Bigsby stuff.
Anyone who knows anything about social studies will tell you that there is institutionalized, systemic racism in the United States and throughout most of the world. In fact, monopolizing the levers of societal power and unfairly discriminating to maintain, consolidate, and increase unfair power differentials is based on a number of factors.
Intersectional feminism shows how disadvantages stack or compound. The classic example is how black women are treated worse than both white women and black men, but many other variations of interpolated disadvantages exist.
Conversely, societal advantages stack or compound. Thus, those at the top of the pecking order are typically wealthy, white, conservative, religious men.
None of these advantages or disadvantages are fair. We all know the saying, "Life isn't fair". No, it isn't, but it should be. It is incumbent upon all of us to strive for a fair and just society. What is is no excuse for not striving for what could be, even should be.
As a middle-class white male, I have privileges. It is no attack upon me to recognize this, and I feel no "white guilt" about it. I did not choose to be white or male, and even my economic status is largely an outcome of the status into which I was born.
Other traits are at least more inherited than chosen, if not entirely so or even if somewhat environmentally influenced, such as gender and sexual orientation. Therefore, a straight person should not feel guilty for being straight any more than a queer person should feel guilty for being queer. A cis person should not feel guilty for being cis any more than a transgender person should feel guilty for being transgender.
And a white person should not feel guilty for being white any more than a person of color should feel guilty for being a person of color.
Since you should not feel guilty, that does not mean we should protect irrational fears or irrational guilt by failing to address the unfair advantages and disadvantages. White fragility is no excuse to maintain unequal access to power. Same goes for all other categories of unfair inequalities.
How would you feel if it were you: if you were a poor, black, disabled, atheist lesbian, for example? Treat others as you would want to be treated if you were them; Golden Rule stuff. That's why I really don't understand these Clayton Bigsby people who justify white fragility, or poor folk who justify billionaires and corporatist capitalism. It's almost as if they are disguised provocateurs or something.
It is only by teaching critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and similar self-reflective critical examinations that we have an opportunity to improve society, thereby forgoing any need to fee guilt for inherent traits. It is only through enlightenment of the truth that we can correct injustices. Ignorance of injustice only perpetuates injustice.
I don't understand how the moniker "woke" ever came to be used in a derogatory way. I would much rather be aware of ugly truth so that I can help fix problems than blissfully unaware while problems persist.
I woke ip in Idiocracy. This is a dystopia. I am waiting for the apocalypse to end and the director of the story to be fired.
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