What do you think about a poc discriminating against another poc who is not of the same background? Is that considered racism?

queercommunist:

butchcommunist:

I think it’s a shit thing to do. Like I know a lot of Latinos who really don’t talk to black people, a lot of Asians who don’t talk to black people, etc as sort of a matter of course. But I take issue with the idea that any action can be considered racism, regardless of the background of the person committing the action. 

I don’t agree with the idea that a person’s actions, or even that a person themselves, can be racist. A person can be a white supremacist, or a person can be anti-black, or anti-POC in general, and I may call them “racist” or “a racist” for shorthand, but even when I do I recognize that as a bit lazy on my part because I don’t actually mean that the person I’m referencing is a racist. There is no such thing as a racist person in the strictest sense of racism. Racism is a system of power distribution that concerns itself primarily with the race of the people it affects. I want to be clear on that. Racism, as far as I’m concerned, is only a racialized system of power distribution, and not a set of beliefs about people of color. White supremacy is a system of beliefs (the belief that white people are superior to other people), and that system of beliefs helps uphold racism. Because power affects all personal relationships and is exercised both in personal relationships AND through institutions like schools, I think it’s safe and politically sound to say that racism is institutional- that is, that racism permeates many of the institutions we all participate in. As such, we all learn the ideologies upholding racism (like white supremacy and anti-blackness) as a result of our interactions with classmates and coworkers, etc. ALL of us have thoughts that are affected in some way by racism, and I don’t agree with any politic that refuses to admit that- those of us who are not “racists” are not racists either because (as is the case for many people of color) it doesn’t make sense for our worldviews or because we have been actively taught that racism is not okay. I don’t agree with any politic that considers a “racist” to be a complete throwaway as a human being- in fact, I think most racists are people who mean to do no active harm but have never been taught how to unlearn white supremacy. I think the same way about capitalism and class as I do about racism and race- a person cannot be a capitalist, but they can be pro-capitalism and it’s easier to say “capitalist” for short. Capitalism is a system of goods distribution, and not a set of beliefs a person holds. Now, as person can totally be a classist because classism is a set of beliefs about class (that the bourgeoisie is better than the producing class) and classism helps to uphold capitalism. I hope what I’m describing makes sense now. Systems are upheld by beliefs which are upheld by cultural practices, social norms, histories, etc. Racism is a system, upheld by white supremacy and other ideologies.

To answer your question more directly, I don’t think it’s helpful to ask whether POC can be racist towards other POC. I don’t care, honestly. If a Latino calls me a nigger it hurts just as badly as a white person calling me a nigger. The intention may be different, and there’s a lot of emotional stuff going on with any POC calling someone a nigger, but the effect is exactly the same. If you smash me in the face with a bat because you’re upset, it hurts just as much as smashing me in the fact with a bat because you hate me. Either way, my face is smashed. If a non-black POC denies me a job because I’m black, it has the same effect on me as a white person denying me a job. Either way, I’m unemployed because of “racist” behavior. Do you see? So framing people’s actions as “racist” and then trying to qualify how “racist” something can be based on the race of the person committing the action does nothing for people of color affected by racism. I’m not saying that it’s totally cool for white people to commit white supremacist actions just because people of color do it do (lol where do you think POC got it?????) but I’m saying that I think it is politically useless to try to rate someone’s racism on a scale of 1 to 10 based on the person’s race. I think it’s much more useful to look at the supporting belief systems and knock them down wherever you encounter them.

To individualize structures of power and reduce them to personal sets of interactions rather than seeing them as structural problems which then infect our daily lives does two things: one, it turns combating racism into a project meant for individuals, meaning it tells us that we should fight racism by fighting individual racists, and two, it allows us to easily ignore the fact that racism and other structures like it are institutional, and that it is our need to live through institutions infected with racism (and often, built on racism) that should be the ultimate target of anti-racist activism and thought.