Debate Flares After Black College Students Seek A Non-White Roommate

[MrScorpio]

183. Well for one, it's not my definition, it's theirs

And although it is theirs, I can see where they're coming from. I'm just not presuming that my own different methods for choosing my own roommate is a better reason for why they choose theirs.

I'm not offended in any way because my own methods are different than theirs.

Although I, myself, am another person of color, I know that the rationale behind the way the choose a roommate has nothing to do with me. It's not my position to personalize a story in which I have nothing to do with.

However, my unwillingness to apply my own values and methods to people that I don't know doesn't prevent me from understanding their point of view. This isn't about me, in the least, just as this isn't about anyone else on this forum discussing this story.

It would be nice if more people stepped outside of their own narrow frames of reference and show some empathy for people unlike themselves.

Unfortunately, as it's been demonstrated here, it's not the easiest thing to do for most of those people who have derived benefits from a system of endemic and institutional white supremacy. It's like a blind spot, one which has played all over this particular thread.

I mentioned before that one should take oneself out of the equation, but too many people seem unwilling and unable to do just that. It starts, especially for white people in this society, to take some time to examine what their own whiteness means in the context of a still overtly white supremacist society.

You talk about tribes, but you skip way over any notion that we still retain a racial hierarchy in this country, one where being non-white relegates one to the inherently inferior position. Frankly, the colorblind crap is simply another way to diminish the value of people of color to themselves.

Sometimes we just want to love ourselves because of who we are. If we're black, we'd love to take the opportunity to love our own blackness. Not that such a thing means that we hate white people, but because we do love ourselves on our own terms alone.

Unfortunately, for most whites who have been indoctrinated into a white centered and white identified culture, one which standardizes whiteness to the point of relegating non-whiteness to that inferior position, it's kind of difficult for them to see outside of themselves.