So we keep putting off these conversations, or we’re having them on the Internet, where it’s too easy to be anonymous and therefore cruel and selfish. We come to understand that if we want to be included in the American conversation, we have to work twice as hard while being told that we’re lazy, or that the government gives us money, and then told that we’re angry if we bring up the problem of racism in public spaces or when it doesn’t feel like the right time. The onus is always on us, we the oppressed, to challenge a system that wants to conserve its traditions and traditional values. It’s not even agreed upon that this country’s origins are steeped in slave labor, genocidal bloodshed and the taking of land from a people, even though these are facts most if not all historians would agree are facts. It is deeply damaging to the psyches of oppressed communities who suffer because of this history to hear lies about what this country means and has meant. This country has been ruled by white men and made to benefit white people above all else since its inception. Ignorant questions are frustrating to people of color because in movies as well as in literature, the white male is the default representation.
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