Racism is more than a hat you put on in the morning.

[penguinparity]

There have been a lot of thoughts and words already written on the J2 Haiti story in the past few days.  Most of them have been much more eloquent than I am at the moment and I do not feel the need to repeat their sentiments.  I have not read the story itself, nor am I going to.  I've read the excerpts and a fair number of posts of people who have

Comments

[penguinparity]

Glad it was clear, I was a little concerned about that.

[jantalaimon]

I'm not in SPN fandom, and while I do catch up with some wanky fandom-at-large-ness on occasion, I'm not really online in a "fun" capacity as much as I used to be. So I actually hadn't seen this.

But yes. This. Thank you for writing this. Spot fucking on.

[penguinparity]

I tend to catch these things second-hand myself as my time is rather limited between school and dealing with the family, so I understand. Plus I also tend to largely stay out of Supernatural fandom except for the occasional foray just because of the sheer amount of drama there is. At the same time, dealing with institutionalized racism isn't something I walk away from in real life, so I'm not likely to put blinders on when cruising the interwebs either. =/

[hollyxu]

Thanks for writing everything out so clearly, though it does look very bleak when I have to stop and think about the whys of how privilege is formed. It's just so very hard to fight against willful, institutionalized ignorance, when it would be easier to go with the tide.

Dammit.

[penguinparity]

So sorry for the late reply, been dealing with a family member in the hospital for the past several weeks, so I've been crap about replying to comments.

Institutionalized racism can make things seem so very bleak and impossible to overcome because it is so overwhelming and systemic. I wish there were an easy answer on how to deal with it, it's a question I've struggled with for most of my life since I started trying to come to terms with my own privilege. I ended up becoming a teacher.

Resisting and destabilizing white privilege in our daily lives is one of the things I do, but I say that from a position as a Caucasian woman who is easily marked as part of the dominant culture.

[chemfishee]

*applauds*

Yeah... That's all I have to add.

[penguinparity]

Thank you, bb. :)

[amazonziti]

This is an absolutely fantastic post, insightful and precise.

I am hosting a signal-boost/link round-up here in my own LJ; I'm going to add this post to my list of links when I next update. If you'd rather I not link to you, just let me know and I'll take the link down.

[penguinparity]

You are more than welcome to link to this and thank you for reading.