white as Default
“What is ‘white as default?’” you may be asking right now. The world we live in in the US is white as default. It’s the way we think in terms of white and not white. It’s “people of color” and “people”. See how the white fell away, not even mentioned or thought of? white people don’t think of ourselves as being white or having race or racial issues. Racial issues are for other people, not white people. It’s being asked what you are in a work function for racism and responding with “just a person” or “plain” or “normal” or something along those lines. Race is something we don’t have to think about. That is white as default.
Why is it bad? Because it dismisses everybody else and makes whiteness “normal” and everything else “not normal” or “good vs. bad” etc. It means we don’t have to see ourselves as part of a group. I’m just me, and you’re just you, but “they” are a collective.
When white is the default, we will never see ourselves as having a race, or being a collective/community. We will never see it as something that needs to be fixed because we assume everybody experiences life the way we do.
We have to learn to see how race impacts us too, as much as every other group of people in this country. We don’t often see our advantages; we just know they’re there. We only remember them, it seems, when equity comes up in conversation, and then usually it’s framed in the context of preserving it…
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