A black woman recently published a video on TikTok, ranting about the numerous reasons why she does not trust white people. The racist rant quickly digressed and devolved into her conclusion that she cannot wait until white people are the minority.
The TikToker kicked off the video by saying: “I don't trust white people. I don't trust white people for a multitude of reasons. But one of the main reasons is they're unpredictable.”
It is unclear how the individual was able to draw a correlation between someone’s skin color and predictability as if to suggest that there are no “unpredictable” black, Hispanic, or Asian people. The idea of being “unpredictable” typically stems from not knowing the person with whom you are talking about. It is generally grounded in unfamiliarity.
She continued: “Like I think about all the times where I really considered white people my friends, and then when we got in a small argument, they released all the racism they had throughout our whole friendship. Scary.”
She went on: “And then I think about the fact that I become mutuals with people, give them the opportunity to come clean about any problematic past, they say nothing, and then they get exposed for being racist.”
It appears lost on this individual that she is actively expressing racist sentiment while criticizing racism. There are those who claim that minority groups cannot be racist because they do not have power, but this betrays the long-held understanding of what racism is. The notion that racism is only ever tied to power is a relatively recent development that appears to afford racism toward white people without the fear of being called out on it.
The National Association of Scholars reported that the “twin themes” of “only whites can be racist” and “all whites are racist” first appeared at the University of Delaware in 2007, adding that the “sustainability,” dorm-based program at UD offered the following definition of racism:
“A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. ‘The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination….’”
This mangled definition of racism has been spearheaded by those in academia, eventually drizzling down into the minds of the general public, who often choose to weaponize racist sentiment under the guise of criticism. That is precisely what this young woman is doing in this video: she is freely flinging racist muck at white people, believing that it is impossible for her to be racist, even though if a white person were to say these things against black people, it would immediately be condemned as such.
But she goes on: “And it's never like some low-key like, ‘I used to say the N-word in songs.’ No, it's like [using the] hard-R against black people. Like, tell me why white people are normalizing a racist past. Also, I think about the fact that white people have continuously, when given the opportunity, oppressed multiple marginalized communities, and I think about the fact how easy it is for them to do it again.”
She concludes: “Like if they really want to, they will bring slavery back. They kind of already did with the criminal justice system, plus the rate of hate crimes. I will legit always be scared of white people until they're the minority, which I hope will be sooner than I think.”
It is difficult for a thinking person to wrap their head around the supposition that slavery will make a comeback in the US, much less making the false equivalency that the criminal justice system is somehow analogous to slavery.
However, the young woman comforts us with the surety that she will feel safe again when white people are the minority, seeming to suggest that this would signal a time when black people would be able to wield power over white people. The natural question to ask is: If black people eventually become the majority in the US, will people like this young woman then have to take full responsibility for the overt racism she demonstrated, or will she merely “normalize” her racism?
