December 3, 2016

It's an actual thing now.

Trump supporters stressed out, yelling at the air, claiming discrimination or mistreatment by African-American service workers. Caught on camera.

The staff at AM Joy is calling it "Acute Discrimination Envy."

JOY ANN REID: There's an interesting piece of data in this poll. They say [diversity] comes at the expense of White Americans. Clinton supporters, only 16% say that, 21% of Democrats say that, and if you jump to Republicans, it's 49% and White working-class voters, it's 4 in 10. What is going on that people feel diversity is hurting them?

TIM WISE: Well, when you are a member of a group that's been able to take for granted its normalcy, its centrality to the narrative of what America means and you have to suddenly share that designation with people who don't look like, pray like you, they feel decentered --and to have 70%, 80% feels like oppression. What's really interesting about these videos, they really demonstrate the fragility of whiteness and prove the extent to which White Americans continue to have advantage and privilege. Here's what I mean. If you think getting slow service at a Starbucks is oppression, then clearly you've never been racially profiled by the New York police department. If you think that being asked to reuse a bag at Michaels is oppression, you've never been choked like Eric Garner was. Being shot by an officer in the back from a distance of 17 feet, we can't get a conviction for him. Clearly when White folks are claiming to be the victims, we're proving how little we understand victimization. It's not having Rue in "The Hunger Games" movie be a Black actress.

The discussion goes on to cover media and especially news, the lack of diversity in newsrooms, and the depiction of immigrants, Muslims, and people of color as being negatively one-sided.

I want to highlight a group called SURJ mentioned in this clip. It stands for "Showing Up for Racial Justice" and it is a group of White activists doing what they can to support Black Lives Matter and other groups fighting for racial justice and equality:

One of the things that dominant white culture teaches us is to feel isolation and scarcity in everything we do. SURJ believes that there is enough for all of us, but it is unequally distributed and structurally contained to keep resources scarce. We can fight the idea and the structures that limit and control global capital by creating a different world together. We believe that part of our role as white people is to raise resources to support people of color-led efforts AND to engage more white people in racial justice. Together we can make the world we want and need.

Definitely worth the click.

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