iconoclasticallyqueer asked: Your “dragulation” of Kevin really bothered me and strikes me as quite racist, for two reasons: 1) Reducing a person of colour to carciature of a food product from their culture - similar to portraying an African-American as a piece of fried chicken or a Mexican person as a taco. It just seem icky. 2) Using as a name something from a totally different culture - Phở is Vietnamese, not Japanese. Not even East Asian. Conflating all Asian cultures into one is the very definition of Orientalism.
Don’t overlook the fact that the wig is from Rei Ayanami cosplay.
Really? That’s your response? Laugh off racism with a joke?
Not ok.
I really was trying to approach it nicely. I purposefully sent you a private message so this didn’t have to escalate or turn ugly.
But clearly you have no room in you for self-awareness or education on racism. To make fun of me for pointing out when you’ve done something that pretty damn racist in order to side-step the issue and not even have to deal with it is cowardly and juvenile. I don’t give a fuck that you don’t think that my opinion matters, but I do give a fuck that you think that it is funny to reduce a person of colour to an inhuman caricature of their culture. That shit’s straight up racist.
And here’s what I don’t think you understand - you don’t have to consciously believe that you’re better than people of colour to be racist. Just because you don’t use racial slurs or go around beating up minorities doesn’t mean that you’re TOTALLY NOT RACIST! - racism is an engrained, integral part of every single white person because we were raised in an engrained, integrally racist society that confers upon us privileges for perpetuating that society.
So when someone tells you that something you’ve done or said is racist, even if it’s another white person, the smart move isn’t to dismissively laugh it off or make further jokes about it, but to actually examine yourself and see how you can be less racist in the future. At the very least you could’ve responded with why you disagree with my analysis or something to indicate that you actually took it seriously.
One last point: I’m not saying any of this to create drama. I’m saying it because, as a white person who benefits directly from a racist society and who gets massive privileges for not being a or perceived as a racial minority, I refuse to perpetuate the system without at least dissenting, without voicing my hatred for a system that treats me better just because I’m white. For me, to do anything else, to benefit passively from a thoroughly racist system is to perpetuate that racism and validate that racism.
And that is something I will not do.
I have no idea if anyone is even listening at this point. No doubt you no longer are Todd, if your flippant response is any indicator. Indeed you’ll probably go about your merry way and just see me as some angry asshole queen who won’t shut up about “racism-this” and “heteronormativity-that” and “OMG look at those fucking misogynists”. Just keep on pretending that, geez, it’s just a joke and you’re totally not part of the problem and nothing you could ever do or say keeps racism alive.
I just can’t gently educate anymore. I have no energy left to nicely explain shit to people who just refuse to get it.
