[Saya]

Originally Posted by Acharis

I do give a rats ass.
When there's domestic violence upstairs, I ring the police to make the man realise people are aware of his aggression to his partner, and hold him accountable for his actions. I don't do this because she's a white woman, she's Aboriginal.

When a friend told me there was an illegal brothel opposite us that had trafficked Asian women in the past, I watched it for some time afterwards. When I met someone in a social setting who worked with sex workers organisations, I asked her about it and was relieved to hear it was now a legal one. I still worried about sneaky trafficking though, anything sus and I start doing tip offs.

You probably meant white people in general historically and I'm probably going to be told I'm tokenising, but my point is if I can know about something I don't accept or condone it.

Do you want an ally cookie? Good for you for being a basic decent human being, but if you care, its not about you when people say white people don't care about PoC. In the grand scheme of things, white people don't care. We don't like PoC. We don't like PoC so much we dont' even think about them or notice they're not there in our lives when we segregate ourselves from them. We don't care that language has power, and we do not like being denied power over them when they ask us not to use words that are racialized.

I understand though. There was a media uproar when Jill Meagher was taken off the streets (euphemism), and some people said that it was due to 'Missing White Woman Syndrome'. I think that she also got disproportionate coverage because her assault followed the traditional script that **** culture teaches everyone to expect. Pretty married white lady, local area, stranger in the bushes...

The media reports what people can relate to, and a lot of the time that's through a privileged and overwhelmingly White lens.

Its not just what we're used to and what we relate to. White people are not an overwhelming majority, market wise it would make more sense to include diversity but we're stubborn about not allowing it. For example, another media tactic is the demonization of black men. Trayvon Martin was responsible for his own death for wearing a hoodie (while black.) It wasn't very long ago our parents and grandparents were lynching black men for whistling at white women. I've seen rrape awareness ads that show a white girl with a black man's hand around her mouth and it goes on to talk about how to avoid rapists. Our hatred for black men is psychotic but its presented as natural, normal, and they're to blame. I do believe women are often blamed for their own assault, but if black men **** white women, Kobe Bryant is the only example I can think of where they were willing to look the other way.

However, the Magdalene Laundries are information that I've recently found out about, it happened in my lifetime and I'm pissed that the Catholic church has gotten away with such serious humans rights shenanigans (even for them) until so recently.

It reminds me of history when women were also considered property like cattle, used for labour and had no reproductive rights.

We're also used to make supposed allies feel better about themselves when they pick and choose what they're going to care about and what they're not going to care about, but above all they don't want to talk to us about it.

Saya, I'd like to stop you there. Much of this information on PoC isn't given't coverage, due to an admitted bias in the media. While it sucks that people aren't informed about issues you care deeply about, think about if information is actually getting to people before you say they just don't care.
Ignorance of these issues is not always due to a malice, laziness, or white privilege on the part of the individual. More lack of that information.

Despanan isn't a poor guy with no education living in poverty, he's older than me, more educated, involved in OWS where I know this has been hashed out a lot, and his parents are rich and until recently supported him financially. I cannot think in any way in which I have privilege over him.

I'd also like to talk about privilege. You seem to have assumed that everyone has the same access to information and opportunity to absorb it that you do.

As I just pointed out, Desp has more. I'm talking to him on an individual basis as someone who has all the resources at his finger tips and yet always wants you to take the time and energy to educate him.

I'm not going to say much, but for years I didn't have access to technology or people that would speak with me and give a wider political context.

My brain space and energy was spent on finding stable housing, preserving my personal safety and negotiating the barriers formed by my own mental illness, and I didn't have consistent access to the technology that carries current information.
I didn't get to partake in further study, so the only reason I can discuss these concepts with you is from outdated feminist literature, my own experience, general reading and self education in the few years since I saved enough for laptop and internet access.

My situation was backwards and extreme, so it's not relevent for most.
But access to information (sometimes requiring access to technology) and the stability to concentrate on that non-essential to survival are pre-requisites to being able to look at the wider issues. Not every member of society has that.

I get that a lot of times people miss the point or don't bother to learn because they have the privilege of not ever having to worry about it.

But I don't call ignorance a privilege. I call it a disadvantage.

I'm from a similar background, I'm from a tiny town that only got highspeed internet a few years ago and I was 22 by the time I got my own computer. I was not born knowing this shit.

But the thing is, you don't have to know everything. That is far from the point. I sure as shit don't know everything about racism. I'm white, I never can. But when Versus calls me out on shit, I apologize and go figure out what I did wrong. Like a while ago I was talking about this white supremist group and I refered to them as white power groups, and he asked me not to. I really had to go think about that one, and now I do feel like a dumbass, but its not his job to educate me. That would be exhausting, to be responsible for his own education and mine and Desp's and your's and all of Gnet's. A person can't do it all, and its not fair to ask them to.