Background: The Red Cross put out a water safety poster where the white people depicted are labeled "cool" for following the rules of the pool while the dark people in the pool "not cool" for clearly breaking the rules.
Yes. This is bad. But I don't care about the Red Cross. I care about the predominantly main stream media response to the poster.
That's THE point.
White people can label black people as bad so automatically that don't even notice it while they are in the middle doing so. Imagine how many white people drew, colored, printed, and edited this poster and just generally saw it somehow before it was approved for public consumption -- and still thought it looked "normal."
Before I read one caption on this poster, I saw most if not of the "not cool" arrows were pointed at dark children. They were the bad ones. Of course the sole black girls is pushing some. She's automatically bad -- just like the black kids at the McKinney Pool Party.
To me, the fact that this wasn't done on purpose shows how bone deep white supremacy is in white people.
Think about this:
1) Thoughts and beliefs create a person's actions.
2) "Beliefs" can be considered thoughts you aren't thinking right now in your conscious mind.
- Example Of A Belief: Gravity - Whether gravity is real or not is beside the point for now. But a person who is mentally ill, who did not believe in gravity, might walk around holding onto things that are bolted down so as not to fly away. Most of us ACT as if we believe in gravity by walking around everyday without worrying that we should always be holding onto things that are bolted down lest we fly away.
- That is, we DO NOT BELIEVE we are going to fly away if we do not take the ACTION of holding onto things that are bolted to the ground because we DO BELIEVE in gravity.
- And we walk around, not holding onto things bolted down without having thoughts of gravity in our heads.
- Therefore your thoughts on gravity can be thought of as a thought you do not currently have in your head as you act on it -- a.k.a. a belief
3) White supremacy beliefs and racist beliefs are some of the beliefs that can inspire one to take action.
4) Sometimes you can't pull your true beliefs into your conscious mind.
5) However, your actions can sometimes point back at beliefs that you can't (or won't) pull into your conscious mind.
6) The action of drawing that poster with all the "uncool arrows" pointed at dark skinned children points back to a white supremacy and/or white racist belief system.
So yes, diversity within the Red Cross might have kept this poster from being published, just as one white newscasters said. Yes, a person of color might have seen the problem immediately and stopped the poster from being published. But how does diversity get rid of the white supremacy beliefs and white racist beliefs in the white people who created, edited, and released the poster at the Red Cross?
How are the white supremacy beliefs and white racist beliefs in the people at The Red Cross affecting people of color they serve?
How many co-incidences involving racism and white supremacy can "well-meaning" white people believe in a row? I mean, isn't serial coincidence what you have to believe in order to further believe that racism is always conscious and has nothing to do with how this poster was created?
* * * * *
By the way, "white mainstream newscaster" and "racism enabler" sound exactly the same to me these days.
No comments:
Post a Comment