"My" people

[*PhilHos*]

(04-12-2018, 05:32 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: I was listening to an activist talking about this sort of sentiment the other day. He was referring to the question often asked that is "why do you have to make it all about race?" This is a similar sentiment to what you are expressing here. The problem is that it isn't always the members of those groups that are separating themselves off. The whole concept of race was constructed by western (white, upper-class, Eurpopeans or of European descent) academics. Then, we as a society define these racial categories. What makes a person black or white is an agreed upon idea within a society. People that don't often think about their racial identity in society are often doing so because of a position of privilege where they do not incur as many negative impacts on their daily lives because of that identity.

A black person is constantly reminded of their racial identity in their daily interactions with society, and the same is true for other minority groups. It would be great if we didn't look at race so much, but that just isn't who we, as humans, are.

But how much of the reminders of their racial identity is from OTHERS (or even others of other races) and how much of that is from seeing something that's not even there? I've known a few people over the years that claimed that anything negative said or done towards them was due to racis, when there was absolutely no evidence of such a claim.

I don't doubt that many, if not all, people of color have experienced racism to some degree in their lives, but I highly doubt that most encounter racial reminders on a daily basis unless it's of their own doing (reminding themselves of their racial identity I mean).