Pink
Clusterfuck
Volvo engine drawing I did…
submitted by anonymous
Mod note: This is an extremely important submission because there is so much hinging on this.
Before I start, no, this does not mean that a person who has had this thought does not take pride in their race/ethnicity.
When you’re a child of color and you watch television and all you see is white characters being happy and prosperous, falling in love, being doctors, having attractive lovers what do you think that tells you? When you watch as people of your skin tone are accused of being “dirty” or “moochers” of society, what do you think that says to young malleable children of color?
This isn’t some treacherous betrayal of other POC, but something that I’m sure most POC can identify with. It was a main focus in the movie Precious. In the novel I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou starts the book with an anecdote about believing that the lavender dress her grandmother was sewing for her would make her a beautiful, wisp of a white girl.
Remember the clark doll experiment?
Not seeing yourself represented as anything other than a racist trope or the villain or the tokenized friend does horrible things to a person’s self esteem.
It is insidious.
It is the constant nagging voice in the back of a POC’s mind telling us that we will never be good enough, beautiful enough, successful enough until we are WHITE.
Now tell me again how not representing POC in popular media isn’t harmful or racist.
This exactly. I have felt like this before, even though I’m half white, it’s still an issue for me because the other half of me is Japanese, so when I’m being criminalized for whatever I do, it’s the blamer’s choice if I’m the racist white kid, or the “HERROOO TENTACLE RAPE SUSHI” Japanese kid that many whites still refer to me, even today.
