An analogy explaining why the white-written dictionary definition of racism is incorrect.

stfuconfederates:

skirtingtheline asked:

I’d like to know where I’m supposed to find a definition of racism, if I’m not allowed to quote from a dictionary, an encyclopedia, or any other reputable source. Can you actually give me a source for this definition of racism that Tumblr seems to have come up with (because that is my experience)? I mean, please. I really do want to know. It’s why I bothered to comment in the first place and not just ignore you. Also, no, I don’t think calling someone a cracker is the same thing as, for example, calling someone a n****. I don’t even say the word aloud unless absolutely necessary. It’s disrespectful, rude, and INCREDIBLY racist. Actually, I don’t even like black people using that word. Kind of the same thing as if a gay person was going around calling other people f****ts. (I’m a lesbian. And would never use that word either.)

Ok. Here’s an analogy that may help you understand the situation surrounding what exactly racism is.

Let’s say that, on a triangular world, three independent nations, all people of the same color, are separated by an ocean. In one corner is a nation consisting only of people with four fingers on each hand and four toes on each foot. The second nation consists of people with five fingers on each hand and four toes on each foot. The third nation consists of people with four fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot.

Now the first nation, with 16 fingers and toes, travels to the five-finger nation in search of wealth and notices that the natives of that land have 5 fingers on each hand. Based on this difference, the first nation calls them ‘savages’, rapes, enslaves, and commits horrible genocide against the ‘fivies’, steals their land, and kneels over it to thank God for this wonderful place that they had discovered. If only there hadn’t been all of those ‘fivies’ there, it would’ve been so much simpler.

Then, the Fours send ships to the five-toed land, discover that the inhabitants have five toes, pack a bunch of ‘em up in the ship, and bring them back to the land that was originally inhabited by the five-fingered people (most of whom are dead or live in impossibly horrible conditions, because the Fours are so incredibly fiveist against them). The five-toed people are then publicly sold at auction, babies torn away from mothers, they are brought to plantations, they are worked and starved and beaten to death. They are raped and humiliated. They are murdered for being able to read. They are murdered for being too intelligent. They are degraded and abused in every imaginable way possible, and all of this is justified because they have five toes on each foot, and are therefore different.

A hundred years later, the enslavement of the five-toed people ends. Most of the Fours try to send the five-toed people back to five-toe-land because they can’t even imagine having to live in a nation where five-toed people can walk free. When the Fours discover that they can’t do this, some of them organize into secret groups which operate with total anonymity. They work against the rights of both the five-fingered and five-toed people. They murder many more. They keep businesses owned by these people from prospering by picketing them or burning them down. They work toward keeping the Fours segregated and higher than all of the Fives in every imaginable way possible. This continues through a civil rights movement which gives the Fives some additional consideration, but how can things be equal? The entire relationship between the Fours and Fives has been dominated by the Fours.

One hundred and fifty years after the large scale enslavement and rape and genocide of the five-fingered and five-toed people has ended, Fives are still being arrested and imprisoned at a disproportionately higher scale than Fours. Fours still control the government and own virtually every organization with any real power. Fours also write the dictionaries

As Fives attain gradually higher positions in society, the media, education, art, etc, many Fours feel threatened by these advances. Every aspect of their culture for hundreds of years has been carefully crafted to ensure  them that they, the 16-digited people are superior in every way, and that things would never change. Because after all, it’s nature. God gave them four fingers and four toes because he wanted them to be in control, to run things as they saw fit.

The Fives are somewhat happy that things are better than they used to be, but there’s so much Fiveism that runs rampant everywhere that it makes daily life difficult in many cases, and makes true equality in society impossible.

There are still billboards everywhere, signs, TV shows, books, and magazines which hold Fourness to be the norm, the correct way, and make ‘others’ of the Fives. This behavior is also normalized, because the Fours are so fiveist that most of them don’t even notice, because their all-four privilege ensures that they will be insulated and will never have to deal with these issues on any actual personal level. This means that most of the Fours, by default, are incredibly fiveist.

However, Fours write the dictionary, and Fours have guilt. Fours can relieve this guilt by claiming that equal rights for Fives equates to oppression. So Fours claim that saying the 4-word is just as bad as saying the 5-word. So Fours write the legal definition of ‘Fiveism’ as being:

Fiveism: (n)

1: Discrimination or prejudice against another person based on the amount of fingers/toes they possess.

2: The belief that one finger/toe count is superior to another.

see also: fiveist, reverse fiveism, playing the ‘five’ card.

There’s your source. White people invented the idea of race in order to justify our abuse and oppression of other people. White people invented race and racism. We own it.

Just because we tried to make ourselves feel better by changing what the definition is, that doesn’t mean that the actual definition has changed one bit.

Also, white is not a race. It’s an invasion.