Themsen said:
So its okay to be racist towards white people because people white people were racist several generations ago? I hate this argument, i havent done a racist act all my life, and still people act as if though i should feel severely guilty and never have an oppinion in a race related issue ever. If that isnt double standard, i dont know what is. I am not really sure i agree that white people have an advantage either, this isnt Madmen times where being black bars you from jobs or anything.
Also, white people in my high school had to take s**t from pakistani immigrants regularily (they called us "potato", it doesnt make much sense i know, but trust me, its pretty hurtfull in norway, completly disrespectfull), and we couldnt say anything back. If we called them pakkis or something to atleast pretend we werent just gonna lay down and be verbally abused, we were racist. Isnt that a disservice? Double. Freeking. Standard.
So yes, i will in fact demand that it has to go both ways, i take not a lick of responsibility for actions commited by stupid people hundreds of years ago, and i will make the statement that in my experience, minorities are way more racist than the white majority.
(As a preface, I'm mostly going by an American viewpoint, so if you're from another country, I can't really talk about how things are there)
You're allowed to have an opinion on issues of race. Everyone's entitled to an opinion. Catch is, as a white person (and thus, a person of privilege) you're stuck with the difficult task of having to be careful of your wording. Like it, or not, you've benefited a lot from the mistreatment of ethnic people. Of course, you didn't personally do it, but you still get the rewards. Just because the days of Jim Crow laws are over doesn't mean racism is dead.
Never said it was okay, though. In many (western) societies racism against non-white people is still a fairly recent thing; there are still people alive that have had some of the worst shit heaped on them because of a "mistake" of being born the wrong colour. SO you'll have a fairly hard time convincing those people to be sympathetic because people are calling you a bizarre name. I can tell you this, a lot of ethnic people grow up with a lot of anger towards white people because of how the worldview is still heavily in their favor. Naturally, a white person doesn't take notice of it - but when you're not what's considered "good people" you notice just how hard it can be in the world.
And it's not a matter of you having to feel guilty because you're white. Of course you never owned slaves, lynched a person, and so on. Again, never said that. But you do have to be aware that a lot of the unspoken luxuries of life are a lot easier for you to achieve than for an ethnic person. Many of the perks of the modern life (i.e. jobs, healthcare, education) were initially set up to bar out anyone not white. So most minorities are starting at a sever disadvantage in life. And you can't fix that by pretending the past doesn't happen and everyone's starting at the same point.
For example: a lot of people in this thread have been doing the "Well, if the cast a black man as Heimdall, people can't complain if Malcolm X is a white dude." That's false equivalence. There have been plenty of occasions where a white actor was cast in the role of a minority character. Black/Red/Yellowface existed long before Samuel L Fury. Even historical figures have been conveniently cast white: Genghis Khan, Jesus, and Cleopatra as the more notable cases. So if you want to argue that point, once again, white people have been at it for almost a century in film, so you're seen by many as crying because now you're getting your just desserts, in many peoples minds. Is it fair? Depends on your POV. But that's how the world currently is.
You can't look at racism in a void where an insult to the commonly maligned groups are on equal footing with one to the dominant/favored race. Racism isn't like saying something stupid out loud in a fit of rage. It guides people's way of thinking, and moving along in the world, and as such, it's an insidious way of thinking that creeps along in society. And it isn't always as blatant as a skin-head vandalizing a synagogue. And that's where you get situations of white the whitewashing of Airbender is seen as a bigger offense than Elba cast as an alien god. Because the history behind one practice (whitewashing) is a long standing one born of hatred, whereas Heimdall's casting was one of Branagh having a massive man crush on an actor.
