June 24, 2020
For those who believe that racism is solely a class issue;
"Often, when talking about issues of race, I will receive messages from white people stating that what I'm talking about is not about race because they, a white person, too suffer from said issue. 'Poverty cannot be about race if there are poor white people. Incarceration cannot be about race if there are incarcerated white people', and so on. Many WHITE PEOPLE, who themselves often suffer from the same hardships that many people of color suffer from, FEEL ERASED by discussions of RACIAL OPPRESSION. In contrast I'll also often hear from white people (often the very same white people) about successful black people that 'obviously debunk' the theory that hardships are race based. 'How can poverty be about race if Oprah exists? How can there be lack of representation in the entertainment industry when Beyonce wins all the awards?' Setting aside the fact that the racial exceptionalism of people of color does not detract from, but instead adds to arguments of racial inequality (because honestly we don't have to name a few successful white people to argue that they are doing comparatively well in society. There are enough that they don't even stand out). These arguments are a pretty extreme oversimplification of how racial oppression works.
Racial oppression is a broad and CUMULATIVE Force. It is not a system that puts all it's eggs in one basket, and racial oppression will interact with many other privileges and disadvantages to produce a myriad of effects.
SO yes, you can have a black athlete who won the genetic lottery, and combined it with a superhuman amount of dedication and then sprinkle him with a lot of luck, and he will turn into a professional superstar earning tens of millions of dollars a year. And YES, you can have a white man born to riches who loses everything he has in the stock market and winds up living in the streets. And you can have a beautiful white woman born with disabilities that set her at a distinct socioeconomic disadvantage. And an able bodied black woman who was able to claw her way to middle class comfort. But when it's all tallied up, the end result will still show more often than not, measurably different outcomes for people depending on race.
There are very few hardships out there that hit only people of color and not white people. But there are a lot of hardships that hit people of color a lot more than white people.
Just because something is about race does not mean it is ONLY about race. This also means that just because something is about race does not mean that white people can't be similarly impacted by it. And it doesn't mean that the experience of white people negatively impacted is invalidated by acknowledging that people of color are disproportionately impacted.
Disadvantaged white people are not erased by discussions of disadvantages facing people of color - just like brain cancer is not erased by talking about breast cancer. They are two different issues, with two different treatments, and they require two different conversations."
~Ijeoma Olou
