A rant about race... (pt 1)

So, for some reason I've seen a large number of my facebook friends posting about race lately, and for some reason, I decided to rant. Comment, criticize, and question as needed. Here goes.

Racism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists within power structures. Socioeconomic power structures exist now in our everyday environment. People without power can’t be racist. People without power can be prejudiced, but not racist. Prejudice is something that you own, something that you create and hold on to. The second you let it go and act, then it becomes part of the powers that be. It becomes part of the system that determines whether or not it’s racist. White racism does not exist. There is no power structure in America that does not acknowledge the benefits that a white person has just by being white. The same goes for sexism. Sexism is an ism when a man exerts prejudice on a woman. Sexism is not sexism when a woman hates dick. We just call them FemNazis. There is no power structure that acknowledges the benefits of being a man. And heterosexism. Most people don’t even know what heterosexism is, or that it was an ism. People have an advantage of being straight. I don’t write the rules. I wish I did, but I don’t. Racism is just another ism that does not exist between two people, but rather, it exists within the structure that position two people in relation to each other. Hate has no bounds. Prejudice has no bounds. But racism can ooze down the power structure and muddy up my boots because I know a lot of white people who don’t want to get their feet dirty. And down here we can still hear the echoes of ‘yes master’ and ‘redskins.’ We still remember chains, and long walks, and internment camps, and fences. And we walk carrying a race tax that whites don’t have to pay. My loving and humorous (and white) boyfriend once told me his version of the story of white struggle – “why do we live in the suburbs and we’re still unhappy?” I don’t know. I’m not white. But I laugh anyway. Does that make me racist? No. No, I can be prejudiced. Oh but if only! If only I had that power to be racist. If only I could shoot words into the air and let them get funneled down to echo. The sad thing is that sometimes we get so tired of looking up that we forget about each other. Clawing and climbing over bodies. Climbing over black bodies and brown bodies and yellow bodies and red bodies so we don’t have to sit and wallow at the bottom. We cutting open old wounds with old (s)words. Sometimes we get stuck dreaming old dreams. But we’re not racist. We’re just tired.