a fool sees not the same tree

and a side note

On a serious note, I find the privileged gaze of white people wanting to have some connection to a disaster than happens to an ethnic minority (thereby erasing anyone else who may have been present), and by extension wanting to ~experience~ something that happens to an ethnic minority so much that they rehash and rehash these tropes endlessly in their writing; this to me is symbolic of something very, very disturbing.

I would like to elaborate by saying that a horror that happened to an oppressed group is:

Not for white privilege to comment on
Not for white privilege to comment on
Yup, you guessed it, not for white privilege to comment on

because that only ends up in I Would Have Done It Differently and It’s All About Me Even When It’s Plainly Not or better yet: I Am Heir To This Heritage. Because hi, you kena sabo us always and forever with your entitlement, with your appropriation, with your guilt that does jack squat for us upon whom your privileges were built.

Which is not to say that people can’t engage with their race privilege, I am merely sick of all the uncreative ways they botch it up. There are perfectly good ways to engage (these exist, mind, just take a look at District 9) except these are cast aside while narratives like Mx Privileged Gaze earlier today are glorified.

This has been a post.

∞Posted on March 20, 2011

Notes: 26 notes

Tags: privilege,