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Racism And White Privilege And Institutional Racism

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Racism; one word, a very powerful meaning and reminder. Many people shy away from talking about racism because speaking it into existence mean that we as a society have not gotten away from it. Unfortunately, this fact that we have not escaped racism and its effects still rings true today. I myself have tried to minimize the effects of racism in relation to white privilege and institutional racism. Sadly, I found that minimizing racism in general, when experiencing white privilege and or institutional racism while helpful can be harmful as well. As a child I guess I never really understood racism. I had no negative or positive experience with it so racism was never an issue. Many today would say that this is acceptable, understandable even because it is not a child’s job to understand racism. In society it is believed that a person doesn’t learn about racism until they experience it. After all, we go to school and receive a textbook definition of what the educated explanation is. It is expected that we accept this definition and that is it but in actuality, this idea is not brought into perspective until it is experienced. I say all of this to point out that this was my line of thinking. I never really understood racism because I was not socialized to truly understand it. My thought process during that time was similar to that described by Victor Luckerson in his article Millennials Can’t Afford to be Color-Blind about Race; he says “because we have been taught to believe

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