No, I didn’t watch Oprah’s interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. As one comedian pointed out, the racism Meghan experienced in England was so bad, she relocated back to the States. Cue: laughter. And the backlash, especially in England. Some angrily accused her of lying. Others angrily “how dared her” for bringing this up when Prince Philip was still hospitalized after having surgery. Majority felt tremendous empathy, for the queen, that is.
As every black person already knows, there’s never a good time to talk about racism. Surely, Meghan knew this. After all, she is an African American.
The dominant narrative didn’t want to talk about systemic racism last summer when George Floyd was murdered. Nor when Dr. King marched. Nor during Reconstruction when the klan first arose. Over four centuries of “too busy” and “not a good time” to bring up the artificial construction of a racial hierarchy that marginalizes and brutalizes People of Color.
Meghan had dealt with this all her life as a mixed race woman. Too black in some circles, too white in others. Just like any new or expectant parent, Meghan dreamed of all these wonderful things for her unborn child. And yet, before she could even birth her son, the ol’ racist troupe of “the one drop rule” raised its ugly head. Asking about “how dark” a newborn will be isn’t a neutral question. Not as long as the racial hierarchy exists.
Some years ago, a black friend of mine remarried. Her new husband happened to be white. A few days after their first child together was born, she was talking to one of her in-laws on the phone. During the course of the conversation, the in-law asked about what the newborn’s hair looked like. My friend shrieked, “What?!” Fortunately, her husband was near by and swept the phone out of her hand.
Again, there’s no neutral way of asking how coarse a mixed race child’s hair is. Questions like these never happen in a vacuum. Historically, the more people of color look like the dominant narrative’s ideal standard of beauty, the better. And God help you if your so called ethnic looks are considered “exotic” and are fetishized.
Since the start of the coronavirus quarantine, hate crimes have increased around 150% against Asian Americans. Although the dominant narrative denies it, the former president helped create an environment that stoked racial hatred. Then, the pandemic hit. Instead of fostering the sentiment of how we could work together to save one another’s lives, he drove home the idea that Asians were to blame.
As of this week’s blog post, the latest crime against Asians, which the dominant narrative has attempted to trivialize, was a white guy who mass murdered several Asian women at three different massage spas in Atlanta. According to the dominant narrative’s reasoning, if this murderer has a sex addiction, then he couldn’t possibly be racist. The sheriff went as far as saying that the mass murderer was “having a bad day.” He later clarified that he didn’t mean any disrespect to the victims when he trivialized that egregious crime. Additionally, the dominant narrative loves playing the old trope that if anything else can explain what happened, then a crime can’t possibly be due to racism.
This incident brought out several racist factors: 1) denial of racism-in this case since the criminal was an admitted sex addict, then he couldn’t ALSO be racist as if the two things were mutually exclusive; 2) empathize more with the criminal than the victims-when white people commit crimes against people of color (POC), the dominant narrative humanizes the criminal, trivializes his/her crime and in the case of black victims, will do their best to dig up as many negative choices the victim committed as if justifying why they caused their own victimization; 3) turn a blind eye to obvious facts-in this case, if this guy was purely operating under a need to destroy places that tempt his sex addictions, why did he drive past several strip clubs and only stop to shoot up places known to have a significant population of Asian women rather than practically any other place, which had very few women of color.
If I dare pronounce anything good coming from these racially motivated microaggressions and crimes is this: any time these incidents happen, time is created to talk about racism. Even the fiercest deniers of racism find their denial bubbles pierced as they must inconveniently find another way to recreate their alternate reality. At the same time, each racist incident calls for more people to understand the causes and seek preventions. Doing this work, the dominant narrative evolves. One day, the racial hierarchy will be extinct.