Today I saw pictures of clouds over desert, since I'm watching an Egyptian production.
It's the first time I see this.
The effects of systemic racism is sometimes weird...
@panina I might be missing something, but how is seeing clouds over the desert part of systematic racism?
White person trying to describe racism
@trinsec it's a long chain of loose association, but:
- we have a fetishized racist image of northern Africa (and most of the rest of the world)
- the image of Sahara is based on blazing heat
- in our culture, that part of the world, and people we picture living there, are only included to represent that fetishized image
...so basically our culture has no need to picture the desert unless it's in blazing heat.
So no clouds. I've never seen it.
White person trying to describe racism
@panina To be honest, I think that's kind of far-fetched to ascribe it to racism. I think it's more linked to ignorance, you never really had to think about it because you don't live in or near a desert. Then you see images of someone living in a desert and then you go like 'hot damn...'.
Someone living in the Arizona desert posts pictures of his place, and I was surprised that it actually had plenty of plant life. I thought it'd be all sand and rock.
White person trying to describe racism
@trinsec I was talking about systemic racism. An important part of systemic racism is the ignorance of the people living in that system.
It's not the same thing as ideological or individual racism, but the effects are extremely similar: it hinders and hurts people it's targeting.
To do something about systemic racism, it's important to listen to the people who are affected, and not dismiss what they describe as far-fetched.