I swear to fucking god the next white dude who tries to play Devil’s Advocate with me is getting throwen out the window.

There was a weird incident in class where a good amount of my classmates, including some who were POC, believed that black people were biologically more aggressive based on anecdotal experience.

I’m white but I was arguing against this because it made no sense. As a possible explanation I argued that black communities are typically poorer because of history (slavery, segregation, ect) and that poor and desperate communities are whats more likely to be violent.

It seemed to get them to pause for a moment. I’m sure I wasn’t as nuanced as I’d be now but I was a dumb reactionary teenager talking to dumb reactionary teenagers.

Ok, so my boring take on this: I think the word privilege is overused. In my mind there is a basic level of human decency everyone should be treated with. If you are treated above and beyond that, you have some privilege. Situations like the one mentioned in this post (to my mind) don’t speak to a lack of privilege, but to the presence of oppression.

Honestly it’s fucked up how our school system treats children. We need to talk about racism but also about how children are not to be seen as some sort of human clay that we need to form into whatever we see fit.