After all these years, ours remains a segregated society. Seventy-five percent of White people don’t have non-White friends, and even on social media, racial segregation is alive and well. But Facebook does provide a refuge for candid, often brutal conversations about racial issues. And what we’re seeing from this digital discourse is that many White people have little sense of the daily lives of Black Americans: the constant terrorizing and harassment, the fact that police do anything but serve and protect, and Black people’s ongoing fear for their lives. And so the level of insensitivity and cluelessness, defensiveness and outright racist comments may not be so surprising, especially at the outset, and not everyone is going to be open to being enlightened. Facebook has been dubbed “Racebook” because it provides a platform where people of different backgrounds can gain more intimate access to each other’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. This kind of virtual space offers the potential for greater understanding and empathy for one another’s lives. But one thing that my interracial cohort of friends, colleagues, and I have noticed is that a significant number of White people, especially women—are commenting and sending private messages to challenge and sometimes attack Black people for expressing and speaking truths about our realities. I’m not talking about the obvious cases of overt racism, but something much more nuanced: the White women who are more or less on our side, but who don’t know their place in the conversation. As a result, their comments are often more presumptuous, who say things like they don’t “see race,” they’re not the enemy, or they’re feeling hurt and attacked.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 21:00:14 +0000