You Make Everything about Race! (The Big Reveal)
Six days ago, I wrote an essay about how white people tell brown people that we “…make everything about race” and are always looking to find racism where none exists. I disagreed with that statement and posited that black and brown folks simply witness racism and point it out to others. The others, then, deny that any racism is present.
It’s an ongoing disagreement.
To demonstrate an example, I reported on a display that a nearby university has on a building facing a major thoroughfare. It is a wall painted with larger-than-life images of students. Each panel has a phrase describing an aspiration that its students and its graduates could reach, along with a picture of a “representative” student.
I contend that this institution did not put enough thought into its images and displayed some biases which I hope were unconscious. I shared the text and invited readers to imagine what pictures were paired with each statement. I promised I’d describe the images to you…
