Shared Responsibility for Racism Is Bullshit

2020 taught me that White people continue to place the blame on others for their shortcomings rather than looking at themselves.

My first year on Medium blew my expectations. I assumed that I would write and get very few people to read my pieces. However, I was shocked to see people resonate with my work, value what I was saying, and continue to be engaged with my pieces. A lot of my pieces focus on race and culture and how being Black in America is never easy when you have to continually fight back the resilient and pervasive nature of racism. As I continued to write on these topics, I began to see a pattern emerge amongst the dissenters who were pissed at the lack of shared responsibility for racism. In their opinions, it wasn’t just White people that maintained the status quo, Black people had to be a part of the problem too.

Being A White Ally was my first curated and widely viewed piece. It was the first time I saw this false narrative of shared responsibility for racism. A user by the name of ‘MXM’ wrote,

Isn’t shaming people for their skin color racist? It is most certainly stereotyping and racial bias. It see quite a bit written that goes something like this — I observe negative things about white people. Because I observe them they must be true. Uhh…. this is EXACTLY what happens the other way around. People observe negative things about some members of a minority group and generalize them into assumptions about all members of that group. This is racial bias to me.

The user falsely equated valid criticisms of White people by other races to mean that they also experienced systemic racism. Here they tried to put the responsibility of racism on all groups instead of recognizing racism for what it often is, White people using their power to remain on top.

My most viewed piece of 2020 made me become readily aware that this wasn’t just the opinion of a few, but many as I began to see more and more comments from White people butt hurt over the criticisms being thrown at them. In my piece Can Black People Be Racist?, I had Eric Gafford comment,

I understand oppression and I understand racial destruction. Blacks have it easy and never…