If we live in a system that is racist...
 

Then I wonder how it resonates when someone says, "Fuck race relations".

What does it mean to ignore your privilege and say things like that?

How exactly does that help if someone says this to a bunch of his friends who happens to not be white?

I don't understand how one can say race doesn't matter and fuck race relations when the other side of the fence can't walk away from the problems in a system that is racist.

Just something I noticed on one of my facebook feeds.

Only just noticed this. I usually point out to people who say either this or its first cousin, "It's nothing to do with me/I'm not a racist so why are 'they' mad at me", that THEIR point of view presumes their own entitlement: the entitlement not to be discriminated against based on the actions of others who have nothing to do with them. To accept this entitlement as natural, while ignoring the "entitlement" of PoC who resent being institutionally disadvantaged based on the actions of others, is illogical. Why are you "entitled" to not be judged by the actions of others, yet PoC are not "entitled" to take issue with the fact that various aspects of their lives are far more likely than yours to suck based on the way they were born? Because you're an overprivileged, overentitled prick.

(Last sentence may or may not be moot, depending on how they respond to logic.)

What Cuckoo said. Basically, its their way of saying they don't want to deal with it and they're going to use their privilege to walk away from it.

On a related note, this book just got recommended on Tumblr, I think I'll get it from the library when I'm done the book I'm reading: http://books.google.ca/books/about/R...d=VGjeQkdwV18C

How exactly do you combat a system that's so willfully blind? How do you make it known it's not acceptable if no one's willing to listen?

Saya I have issues I need you to help me work through my issues.

Hey don't just walk away from me because you don't have the same kind of issues, I need help here.

Are these issues caused by a system of oppression that I perpetuate and benefit from but have privilege to ignore my complicity in the system?

Look SAYA, according to YOUR political views, Elystan's issues are not comparable to, you know, actual oppression. Stop subjugating him by pointing this out. You tyrannous monster.

Won't somebody think of the straight white men? :(

I see that CuckooTuli knows the switch-a-roo.

Mean-spirited rhetoric is my crack.

Hardly any of them

None of them, you jerkoff.

Any oppression that women suffer is negated because women can't be drafted.

Stop institutionally oppressing me

You really prefer to protect your chode than actually learn something useful, huh?

What's a chode?

Learning the concept of privilege changed the way I look at... pretty much everything. I used to take little interest in politics, deciding that my thing was art "instead". It's only recently that I've started to realize how abhorrently fucked up that position is.

Racism without racist is alright. It's useful when you don't have the language to articulate what you already know about.