It's happened several times now that I've heard the arguments "you can't be sexist against men" or "you can't be racist against white people," with the rationale being that sexism/racism are forms of systemic oppression. According to this, a black person that hates white people is exhibiting bias, but calling it racism ignores a larger context.
Nearly every time I've gotten into a discussion with someone about this it's either been with someone that believes this dogmatically or finds this line of reasoning so repulsive that they have little to say about other than refuting it completely.
I think I understand this perspective but I don't agree. There are certainly ways in which discrimination is systemic. Some generic examples would include literacy tests for voting meant to target blacks or lack of paid maternal leave. Another great example is the Dan Ryan expressway here in Chicago, which was intentionally built to segregate and quarantine the black belt from white neighborhoods in the south side.
However, there are plenty of ways in which these things have no context at all. Being black and having store employees follow you around or catcalling are examples of this. Yes, you can argue that the prevailing black stereotype is systemically built, but that doesn't negate the individual agency of the guy that's snooping on his customers. Similarly you can argue that men catcall because they are "privileged" to do so but we're effectively revisiting the same point here. The privilege we're talking about may be systemic, but there's individual agency involved. Unlike the Dan Ryan (which actually involved a group of white people sitting down and purposefully planning to segregate the city) each individual incident boils down to one person interacting with another person, which again means that there was individual agency behind the microaggression in question.
By and large the most obvious statement here is that when trying to tackle this kind of stuff, regardless of whether or not you're arguing that the problem is systemic, you have to engage with individuals. Society is not a singular thing; it's a label that refers to a collective. Convincing someone that catcalling is rude or harassment is best done by giving someone individual attention, especially because you almost always have to listen to someone else before getting them to listen to you.
So if you want to argue that these situations are racist/sexist but boil down to personal responsibility regardless of cultural context, you must also admit that similar aggressions against whites and men are are no different.
A side note is that the system is different everywhere you go. In most places in the United States it's safer to be white, but step into a black neighborhood and it becomes much safer to blend in. Similarly, a lot of countries are antisemitic but NOT looking Jewish may not be the safest thing for you if you're in Israel. Overall some people may have more advantages than others, but what people call privilege is not absolute.
Anyway I'm pretty much done with this rant. Play devil's advocate, chime in or whatever it takes to broaden the conversation.
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