Bet you thought I ran out of things to post about, huh? I’m not that lucky and neither are you. Today, we will discuss the rubber/glue argument. 

Remember when you were a child, if someone made fun of you, your pat response was, “I’m rubber! You’re glue! Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!” Usually this was accompanied by an emphatic sticking out of the tongue at the end of the chant! 👅 

This is how white people discuss racism these days. Just take for instance Trump’s latest Twitter rant calling “The Squad” racist. I’m not racist! You are!  👅 As juvenile as he is, I’m surprised more tongue emojis don’t make it into his tweets. 

An honest discussion about race and racism can’t occur because as soon as racism comes up and a person of color describes their truth, they are immediately called racist for bringing it up. “Racism is so American when you protest it, people think you’re protesting America.” 

Yesterday and today I was on my son’s page describing the concept of tipping and white flight to a young man who took issue with my son’s post about gentrification. Tipping is the concept that when a neighborhood “tips” to just 8% black, white people start moving out. After explaining my point, I was hit with “you’re the one prejudiced about this issue. Not me. Truth hurts, huh?” Poor boy didn’t know or didn’t believe I studied this for part of my dissertation and that I had no anger or malice in my points. I chuckled at his response. 

However, his response is my point for today’s #smallactofracism. Beside the point that it checks the “angry black woman” trope from yesterday, but also the “infantile black person” trope, it also completely misses the point of discussions of racism. Calling a thing a thing, isn’t inherently bad. It’s simply the truth. The question becomes if you are truly an ally, as this young man insisted he was with comments such as “ bro, you know me!” (read: I don’t have a racist bone in my body), then why can’t we discuss my experience under no uncertain terms? Then, once we discuss it, if you’re an ally, ask “what can I do and how can we make a plan about how to combat it?” (A good friend from high school deserves a shout out because she’s that one who not only says, “that makes me sad,” but “tell me what I can do.”) 

So, first suggestion for being an ally? Call a thing a thing and don’t run from it. 

#smallactsofracism