It's Not Necessary For POC's To Say 'Not All White People Are Racist'...

When we as non white people are discussing the very real ways we have been negatively impacted by racism.

We non white peeps are well aware of that 'not all white people' point and have that in the back of our minds as a given before we even start trying to have that race conversation.

Saying 'Not all white people are racist' becomes a problem when we are trying to have that grown folks conversation about race and racism in mixed company, and you as a white person will with regularity defensively drop that comment in there or deliberately do so in an attempt to derail the conversation.

And we can't fix the racism problem in the US if we can't have an intelligent conversation about it.

Please don't even get me started about that BS Webster's Dictionary definition of racism that is not based on reality and damned sure wasn't written by a person of color who has been negatively impacted by it.

And you white peeps don't use a dictionary when you're debating other topics, so why is it that when race and racism is the issue and the discussion is happening in racially mixed company, the POC eyeroll inducing next thing that happens is that the dictionary definition of racism gets deployed by that white person or badly misquoted?

FYI, If you deploy it in the midst of a grown folks convo about race, it's akin to Godwin's Law.  You have automatically lost, and on top of that have shown yourself in the eyes of the person's of color in that race discussion to be clueless about racism.

Just so we're clear about what racism is, I'm using this Sociology 101 definition of it.

Racism is bigotry and prejudice PLUS systemic power and population numbers used by a majority group to retard, roll back or eviscerate the societal progress of a minority group.

An example of what I'm talking about would be the voter ID laws passed by Republicans to keep Black and Latinx people from voting.

So when non white people say that we cannot be racist, they are correct in that statement.  Non white people can be bigoted and prejudiced, but we do not exist (at least until 2040) with the population numbers to consistently turn our bigotry and prejudice into societal policy.

Because of your white skin and sitting at the top of the societal totem pole for centuries and majority population numbers, you have accumulated privileges above and beyond what a person of color has

That is also true in TBLGQ world that we have racist white peeps in our ranks.

And yes, there are racist white people who wear Brooks Brothers suits and Jimmy Choo pumps. They aren't carrying tiki torches, Confederate flags or giving Nazi salutes in public, but they are far more dangerous to non-white people because they wear police badges, sit on judicial benches or have the power to write legislation at the local state and federal level.

Or are sitting in the Trump administration as policy advisors.

And nope, haven't forgotten about the 53% of white women who voted for Trump last November, or who like Tomi Lahren and Megyn Kelly open their lipstick coated lips and get paid mad loot to spew racist crap out of them on national TV networks like FOX Noise.

Just because you are dating, married to or having sexual relations with a non-white person doesn't mean you get to hold your partner up as a human shield to attempt to absolve you of some racist crap you may have done or said.
  
That's reality that elements of you in the white community are unrepentant racists.  Any non white person talking about that reality and how it affects them personally, or the salient point backed up with numerous tiki torch bearing examples that far too many of your white skinfolk are gleefully racist is NOT racism, and y'all need to chill with that conservabullshyt.

So the next time a person of color starts taking about racism, know this salient point before you dive in to comment white peeps.

We non white folks are already aware of the fact before we even open our mouths to intelligently critique whiteness and white supremacy that some of y'all white folks are doing the work to dismantle white supremacy in your own lives, and we applaud you for that.  We just need y'all to get your misguided cousins and have those hard conversations with them.

We also don't need you saying 'Not all white people are racist' in a mixed company conversation that we need to have in the public sphere and on social media about how bad racism is and how it negatively impacts our POC lives  .