Quote with 58 notes
When I teach about racism the first thing I say to my students is that racism is not ignorance. Racism is knowledge. Racism in some ways is a very complicated system of knowledge, where science, religion, philosophy, are used to justify inequality and hierarchy. That is foundational. Racism is not simply a kind of visceral feeling you have when you see someone who is different from you.
Because in fact if you look at the history of the world there are many people who look different who are seen as both attractive and unattractive. It is not about how you look, it is about how people assign meaning to how you look. And that is learned behavior, you see.
And that is why you can’t think of racism as simply ‘not knowing.’ That is not the case at all - on the contrary.
Video with 2 notes
Watch as Mahaliyah performs one of her poems from HBO’s new series ” Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices”.
This series is AMAZING. Young people in America, of varying gender and racial identities talk about their experiences of growing up in the world today.
The video shows a young person launching into a polemic of her (not always so positive) experience of growing up Iraqi in America.
