Race & Whiteness

Whiteness is often tied up with racism, which makes sense to me since white colonizers are the original cause of racism. Obviously not everybody who is white is racist, but there is definitely a good portion who are. However, people also try to play off racism as something they are unaware of. In the CBC news article “Parents angry Montreal teachers wore headdresses on 1st day of school”, the teachers seem oblivious to how offensive their actions were. As educators, they should have been aware of what they were doing, having known the history of racism against Indigenous peoples in Canada. Doing this put the students in an uncomfortable situation. I personally think it is ridiculous that a parent had to be the one to tell a teacher, someone who should know these things, that what they did was wrong. The teachers make it seem as though they were clueless and feel terrible about it but probably knew what they did and just want to seem innocent to avoid trouble.

School curriculums are based around white knowledge and ways of being. Laws used to be based around the same thing. Most things in society are based upon the white colonizers. A lot of the time, these things are in objection of non-white people, such as an all-white jury for a trial of someone who is not white to justify the law that was made for and by white people.

When the thought of white privilege is disrupted in readings or discussions, I feel a bit of comfort because even though I am white myself, I am still very excited for the day that people get over our differences and choose to live in peace together as we were put here to do. However, I still feel a slight discomfort for the reason that I do not wish to feel how those who are oppressed feel. Obviously nobody wants to feel that way. It mostly brings me discomfort because the thought of someone having to go through racism all the time is just an awful thing to think about.

Of course, there is always going to be that one racist person out there, no matter how many people around them are the opposite. This one white guy I used to know once said the n-word in a car full of white people. Immediately, I called him out but he claimed that “it was how [he] was raised.” This is a mindset that our society needs to move on from because it does not matter what environment someone grew up in, it matters what is morally correct in society and how they treat and think of others.

This post honestly might not have made any sense to those reading it but these are my thoughts. In conclusion, white people need to stop doing racist things and acting like they did not know better, white privilege deserves to be disrupted, and society is based around white people, therefore it is biased.