Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Racism is NOT A Black Problem

For centuries, the wealthy white male power structure (WWMPS) has used racism (and all of the other isms) to justify treating people as less than so they can take more of. 

Like dealers who need to get high on their own supply, the WWMPS has wholesaled racism to the rest of the white community to pay for its habit. By creating institutions and systems that extend the benefits of racism to all whites, the WWMPS has turned white people into paid racism stakeholders who are willing to maintain it, or at very least, unwilling to fight it.


These wages of whiteness—paid through preferential access to resources and opportunities, as well as insulation from the injustices and negative outcomes faced by non-whites in similar circumstances—are paid to all white people, regardless of whether they have a hand in creating or maintaining it. As a consequence, the wages of whiteness are often too attractive to refuse, and too easy to disavow.


Unfortunately, the wages of whiteness are like an addiction for which the "antidote is also the poison", because only white people can fix the problem they've created. With every addiction, there are addicts who try to assuage their guilt by blaming others for their habit. With racism, this group typically justifies it as merely a by-product or consequence of the actions or behaviors of non-whites.


In general, white people are too 

addicted to the wages of whiteness to simply give them up. This is why almost two centuries of economic, moral and political efforts have done little to end racism. 


When the only person who has the ability to fix a problem benefits from its existence, any resolution is improbable. So until white people collectively admit that racism is a problem that needs to be fixed and that it is their problem to fix, racism will exist until the concept of race is no longer valid or relevant.

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