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white, an absence of problems

calamityschild's picture

A quote Anne asked me to post:

"You feel your whiteness properly at the American border. Most of the time being white is an absence of problems. The police don’t bother you so you don’t notice the police not bothering you. You get the job so you don’t notice not getting it. Your children are not confused with criminals. I live in downtown Toronto, in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in one of the most open cities in the world, where multiculturalism is the dominant civic value and the inert virtue of tolerance is the most prominent inheritance of the British empire, so if you squint you can pretend the ancient categories are dissipating into a haze of enlightenment and intermarriage.

Not at the border."

-Steven Marche, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/10/white-man-pathology-bernie-sanders-donald-trump