by Ijeoma Oluo Feb 7, 2017

Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it’s required your ignorance. …
while I, and just about any person of color who has spent their lives in a white supremacist society, know enough about white culture to write a book or two on whiteness and option the bestseller movie rights, y’all know almost nothing about us and even less about yourselves. …
You have not had to know these things; even if you studied some of these topics in school, you did not have to know them. People of color, on the other hand, have lost so much when we’ve gotten it wrong. We have been fired for wearing our hair in ways you don’t like, for not hiding our bodies that you decided to hypersexualize, for having too many opinions, for answering too honestly, for using our own accents and dialogue instead of yours, for believing you when you said you didn’t tolerate racism in the workplace, for teaching history you refuse to acknowledge, for celebrating our beauty that you don’t want to see.

Why? Because you don’t have to.

TAGS:  [2010’s] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Denial] [Black Lives Matter]