So now, some of the folks who thought “teachable moments” were just the best thing evar, are now tired of teaching your racist ass how hard their lives are because you are racist.
The problem with those teachable moments is that the same people always end up doing all the teaching. In matters of race (and sex, disability, gender and sexuality, but let’s stick to race right now), the marginalized are tasked with being educators. That is, people of color (POC), are expected to be patient and polite racial and cultural ambassadors who provide white people new to this whole “thinking critically about race†thing with a “way in.â€Â The role entails charitably and unselfishly engaging questions, assertions and doubts from white people who’ve previously done precious little thinking about racism and privilege, but often have quite a bit to say on the topic.
When POC refuse to take on this dual role of spokesperson and resource library, they’re often accused of having shirked an assumed responsibility. The idea seems to be that we’ve missed an opportunity, that it’s our duty to hold white people’s hands and educate them, that we’re condemning some poor white person to a continued life of ignorance.
How about we just do away with these teachable moments and stop worrying about how hard some people think their lives are because they see themselves as victims and just get on with our own lives?
If they’d just stop making people worry about how racist they might be, these folks wouldn’t be asking to be told how racist something seems.
These “ambassadors” actively put themselves into the lives of others and are now complaining that it is too much work to explain things they think are wrong.
There, problem solved.
Or we use this as an opportunity. Use H1-B visas to import all the racial sensitivity trainers to do the jobs American POC won’t do.
And it might go easier as well, Blacks from the Caribbean or Africa don’t have the same chip on their shoulder left by Jim Crow that American blacks have. They won’t have the same antipathy towards whites some American POC raised in PCUniversities do. Plus the guys from Africa -I’m thinking Sudan here- know that the lightness of skin color has no correlation on how much of a dick you can be towards your fellow human. Ditto the Cambodian refugee from Thailand, or the Tibetan exile.
Do this, and we get can more American POC racial sensitivity trainers out of the classroom and onto governmental welfare. Meanwhile, productive working folks are wasting their time in classrooms instead of being productive, thereby bringing down the American economy, helping the progressives achieve their dream of bringing down America because they’re sick of American exceptionalism. Everybody wins!
Of course, when white folks talk about how badly whites have historically treated PsOC, it either comes across as insincere, an exercise in self-flagellation, or deliberate guilt-tripping for the purposes of manipulation and personal gain. So, no matter what whitey does it’s the wrong thing.