1.If a white woman on Facebook posts an illustration of a slave ship’s cargo hold filled with hundreds of African people in an attempt to convey how horrifying modern day airline travel has become—especially transatlantic flights to Paris!—how many minutes should you wait, letting that sink in, before you call bullshit? a) No minutes, you should respond and immediately! It’s your duty to educate white folks everywhere. How else will they ever learn to be culturally sensitive allies? b) No minutes, just shake it off and keep scrolling. c) Eat a cupcake, you’ll feel better. 2.“Sally” works as a cashier at a drugstore. One day her supervisor “Barb” gestures towards a Native woman who is browsing ten feet away. When “Sally’s” supervisor mutters “gotta watch those people like a hawk,” should “Sally”— a) Ignore her supervisor, it must just be a misunderstanding. b) Inform her supervisor that the Native woman she’s referring to just so happens to be “Sally’s” mother who is visiting her at work and waiting for her to go on break. c) Internalize the interaction, add it to a hundred-and-a-thousand other similar incidents since childhood, and slowly, accreted over time, suspend “Sally’s” faith and trust in white people and humanity while simultaneously participating in myriad of destructive patterns due to neurotic tendencies, and basic self-condemnation and self-loathing. Is it reasonable for “Sally” to hold endless arguments with herself about how she’s overreacting, being overly sensitive, “playing the race card,” how no one actually means her any harm, not really, and how she should feel grateful, making mental note after mental note that no one likes a complainer, that no one will like her if she complains about situations and incidents which condemn others and might paint them in unflattering ways and/or worst, as bigots or racists. Is she a professional victim? Who does she think she is anyway? Rosa Parks? d) Calm down.Read More on the Story:
Tiffany Midge: First World (Story) Problems: Brown Girl Quiz (Indian Country Media Network 5/28)
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