Are All White People Racists? Hell No!
It’s been almost three weeks since my beloved friend left us but what’s been ringing in my ears ever since are her final words heard in public - ‘All white people are racists’.
As unsettled as I have been in the past few weeks, I’ve been pondering over the whole ‘racism’ issue …. well, it’s a deep subject with a profound history of abominable colonialism - and frankly, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t exist just because I have never been at the receiving end of it but I have met enough people and have been let in on their thinking to know that it does.
Hopefully, for every ignorant white racist person there exists an erudite white human who celebrates diversity, espouses inclusion and fights for equity in this world.
While it’s undeniable that there exist multitude cases of blatant racism in the world but in some cases if you scratch the surface, what might be construed as ‘racism’ might have something more than what meets the eye. Once you peel back the layers, you realize that it’s simply the ‘East vs West’ divide and not racism that might be at play.
Let me break this down a little. Stay with me..
Most people of color are raised on survival
Well, let’s face it. Our starting point is completely different and it is not a level playing field - understandably so.
Generally, people of color are scrambling to just get by and while their white counterparts rapidly climb Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, most of us struggle to move beyond just getting our basic needs in order.
We must err on the side of caution and thus making a safe choice is the ONLY choice.
Most of us are so blinkered while following a linear course in life that we start to live in our own little bubble - devoid of passions, unaware of what’s happening in the wider world, uneducated of our own history or that of the world’s and fail to understand ourselves - our true potential and the purpose behind our existence. We begin to readily accept things around us and seldom question or challenge the status quo not because we are cognitively incapable to do so but cause we are raised on survival so doing anything else becomes unnecessary.
We are NOT wild and free
Most people of color are generally wanting in the risk taking attitude that’s the cornerstone of the personality of a white person, we are not just wired that way - it would take breaking our genetic coding to not worry about ‘what if it doesn’t work out’ scenario. For a privileged person, the computing is simple - if not this then that but for us it’s game over. So, we need to leave behind our passions and interests and follow an already carved path that guarantees enough payoff so we can have what our past generations couldn’t.
What this means is we don’t take risks…rather we can’t afford to take risks in life. There is no safety net - additionally, life in developing/underdeveloped countries is really competitive - it’s a dog eat dog world. If we fail, we wither and it won’t take long before someone dusts us off and takes our place.
Someone rightly said - “Fortune favors the bold.” Unfortunately, most of us are neither bold nor favored.
We don’t have anecdotes from our travels
Why? cause we don’t travel enough. When you are busy cobbling your life together, travelling is a luxury.
Just to clarify, not that there isn’t a desire to travel but because the money is scarce and it could be put to a better use. A lack of travel makes us deficient in understanding people from other parts of the world. It makes us seem uninteresting in a social setting and potentially inhibits us from bonding with other people as we don’t share common travel experience.
As a result, we end up not knowing enough about cultures, food or history of the world - this severely restricts our growth and fails to challenge us to alter our perspectives in life.
And thus, there is little common ground between us
It’s not that white people don’t want to become friends with us - well, sometimes it could very well just be that but other times, there might be a possibility that it’s the dearth of subjects and lack of a common ground that result in a lackluster relationship between us and them (East vs West).
And at times, white people’s succinct responses and the struggle to find a common topic and eventually giving up might also be misinterpreted as rude and a potential act of racism.
Through this blogpost, I am by no means condoning or justifying racism or what happened to my dear friend - I am objectively attempting to highlight other reasons why innocuous acts of some white people can be labeled as racism and that NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RACISTS.
Sorry my friend, you didn’t meet some of these amazing non-racist white people (like I did).
