Well Hitler did not just come out and say
"Hey. German people. We're just gonna kill six millions Jew. Are you cool with that ?"
No. No. That's not how it works.
The first stage was to dehumanize them
They are seen as less than human, stupid, as animals or a kind of disease. So killing them was no longer murder – it was just ridding the country of something bad.
And the first people killed in any genocide are those in the mainstream who speak up for them. That's what Hitler did. Now the message of hate goes unchallenged.
This is why the likes of Mandela was locked up. Colin Kapernick was kicked out the NFL etc. MLK shot
Read Mein Kampf.
Genocides unfold stages.
Stopping it at any one stage, stops the genocide from going forward.
Racism grows and feeds off a culture of silence. The point of calling out racism is to break down that silence.
It doesn't matter if I persuade anyone.
It doesn't matter if I “win the argument”.
What matters is that you were heard and planted that seed in people’s minds of, “Hey, maybe this is not right.”
Take Elizabeth Eckford.
She was one of the first nine black students to go to Little Rock Central High School in the American South. That school was a racist hell for her – because the 90% who were not giving her sh*t would not stand up to the 10% who were. The American civil rights movement succeeded when people stopped being cowed by fear of standing up to racists.
And I'll say this
Calling out racism matters more when it comes from whites.
Why ? Because most ppl (especially whites) think white people are way more objective and neutral about racism than blacks.
Black people calling out racism ? Whites generally discount what blacks say, it is part of your cultural conditioning, but they still hear it. They hear what we say and, just as important, what we do not say. If something racist goes down and blacks say nothing, whites will assume that it is “okay”. Especially since many whites assume blacks are “oversensitive”.
A bully will always start off with an instant comment, they do this because, if you react they can do what your doing "Hey, you know, just joking, ya know, it's not that serious"
Nope. It's very serious because when you look at the fked up racial history of America that's because racism was not shut down at stage one.
Bookmarks