That said, if the lack of PoC and alllllllll the gay panic are too much for you, here is a handy mechanism for employing your white privilege in a very specific way:
Sadly, I'm going to have to step away from Friends for a moment to talk about something uncomfortable. Race. More specifically, racism.
I've been hearing a lot that you can't call all Trump supporters racists. It's just dumb! And Rude! Here's Chris Cillizza on the topic:
I had to trawl through his Twitter to find that. I can't stand Chris Cillizza. I'll be in this mode for the next 20 minutes:
I've heard it from Jake Tapper and Joe Scarborough and my own Facebook feed. Look, I don't think 47% of white Americans are racist! That's nuts. I think 99.9% of white Americans are racist. It's kind of hard to avoid when you've been told your whole goddamn life that you are the Normal and everyone else is the Not. We have been socialized to white supremacy in this country. We like to think of white supremacy and racism as white hoods and folks hollering the n-word. But it's so much more pervasive and insidious than that.
Think of the movies you've watched and the TV shows you've been into. Think about how you feel when you're the only white person in the room. Think about how rarely that's happened! Think about it. Really. Challenge yourself to be as honest as you can.
See, racism doesn't begin and end with white hoods and the n-word. That stuff is out there (and more so than it used to be due to Dear Leader). But racism is also that casual surprise that someone is smart, that casual suspicion that someone is scary, that pervasive belief that people who are not white have racial identities, but people who are white just have identities. Stuff like that.
We need to stop being defensive about racism. We really really really have to stop thinking that an accusation of racism against a white person is on par, somehow, with the victimization of black and brown people BY racism. We need to accept the culpability that all white people have in how white supremacy remains the Way Things Are in America. We need to stop using terms like "racially charged" and stop pretending things like birtherism or "Build The Wall" or "Low IQ" or any of it is NOT what it definitely is. And, yes, that fucking hat. If you put it on, you've made your choice.
In the end, racism is a white person problem to solve. And if we continue to put white feelings at the center of the debate, we'll never get there. Ever. So if you find yourself feeling reflexively defensive in the face of an accusation of racism?
It'd be nice to think we were better than we were. We're not. The election of Donald Trump, a man who put out a full page ad in the New York Times demanding the execution of five teenage boys for a crime they did not commit and who has never once apologized for that, proves we are not. And the fact that no one - not Joe Scarborough or Jake Tapper or Chris Cillizza or any offended white journalist - demands a response from him about this shows how brilliantly insidious this whole thing is.
It's incumbent upon us to be anti-racist. To constantly fight against our own racism, the insidious ways that the white supremacy we've been socialized to informs our thoughts and actions. And to be better, man. We have GOT to be better.
I leave you with this. Because it slays me. Friends is funny. Fight me.
