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"We", not "Them"

484 words by attila written on 2022-05-28, last edit: 2022-11-22, tags: racism, sexism, toxic, whitenessPrevious post: Christina Sharpe, 2016: Lose your kinNext post: ttyplotisms: the journey continues


If you're white, it's "we", not "them". For instance: I just don't understand why those (other) white people are so racist No, my hearties, instead it's: I just don't understand why we white people are so racist

If you're a man, it's "we", not "them" as in: Why are we men such utter pigs?

Always. I promise. There are no good ones as far as I'm concerned, since we were literally all raised to be bad and have learned to profit from these structures if we can.

The path to understanding and accepting that goes straight down this road. If you just can't see how you're part of the problem when you're a member of a hyper-problematic class then there's nothing for it, nothing to say.

There is no escaping it. The arrows of guilt points straight at us always.

Those aren't the only arrows, obviously. There's oceans, whole planets of guilt that it sure seems like we white men just don't give a fuck about, that we as a class obviously have decided do not and cannot apply to us. The lack of urgency on our part in addressing this in any substantive way is palpable.

Going down this road means a lot of things. Nobody can tell anyone else what it truly means to them. Not everyone has a racist Uncle, or is a part of some social group rooted in toxic masculinity, or even interacts with the rest of humanity all that much. Some people literally cannot avoid any or all of the above and all the variations as a part of their daily life, they must swim in those seas to eat, and yes, it's the fucking system, okay?

Most definitely it is. Except if the system generally works out for "people like you" then blaming the system is hollow indeed.

I've worked in tech, writing software for over 40 years now. Tech is absolutely awful, like every other part of this fucking system. I have many excuses for why I accepted a lot of things I saw, maybe some of them are even valid, but if I step back and look at it over four decades I was most definitely taken advantage of, had obscene amounts of "surplus value" / "shareholder wealth" extracted from my body quite literally, etc. So what. Things were still tilted in my direction, things still went my way more often than not compared to someone who wasn't white or male, even if "my way" was really not a good idea. Just because I was treated like shit, paid garbage, worked ridiculous hours, took up ridiculous responsibilities for jobs that absolutely Did Not Love Me Back doesn't absolve me of anything. It makes me a sucker, just like all the other poor suckers. A reactionary.


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