Remember when black people were shipped across the ocean in chains, and were sold, and worked their ass off until they die? Remember that time? There's this thing called Atlantic slave trade?
I'm pretty sure the “racial tension" was pretty damn bad back then.
It's just black people were feeling all the “tension", and white people were enjoying their booming economy supported by slavery.
For white people, there's no such thing as racial tension for most part of history.
They're the only race that actually mattered, other black brown yellow people were slightly better than dogs.
Who cares! It's normal, what do you mean “racial tension"?! White people and People of Color are in their rightful place.
There's no tension.
You're being funny, next thing you know, we'd have “human/canine tension”!There're two reason why there're so much “racial tension".
Number 1:
We finally started to slowly stop normalizing racism.
This is an awkward sentence, I know. But I felt that it's accurate.
We're still normalizing racism, in some way.
But we kind of slowly realizing racism is wrong and we shouldn't do it.
In other words, we as a society had become a bit more self-aware of the horrible things we do to each other because of differences in skin color.
We started to put up some regulations to protect traditionally oppressed people.
We started to tell each other, OK, perhaps we shouldn't call black people the N word.
OK, maybe we shouldn't make the “slant-eye" gesture with Asian people.And a (hopefully) shrinking minority of our society refuse to do that.
They want to say whatever they want to say even if it's damaging. They want to do whatever they want to do even it hurts other people.
They don't want to change their behavior to be nice to other people.
That's where the “racial tension” come from. Not because all of sudden, Black people and Asian people or Latino people or Indian people become more sensitive and demand to be treated with special care.
But because people of color demanded to be treated as equal, and some white people don't want to do it.
In the past, these people didn't need to do it.
Because racism was normal and accepted.
Now they're feeling the pressure to be nice to people they considered “less", and they call it “racial tension".
Number 2:
People of minority have become more visible.
For the most part of American history, Black people didn't exist.
Independence war, white people fought white people; civil war, white people fought white people over black people; WWII, white people fought other white people in Europe and Asia; Vietnam War, white people fought yellow people in jungles; Iraqi war: white people fought brown people…A lot of white people are perfect happy with their non-black society.
Their nuclear family, their house with white fence, their American dream through hardworking and dedication.And suddenly out of blue, there're bunch of other people taking space.
Fuck it, where did they come from?! And why do I have to co-exist with them and change my way of life so they feel comfortable?!There you have it, tension from bunch of people previously do not exist.
Now all of sudden, they want to be treated like white people.
They want equality in job opportunity and in court and in government and… everywhere!Nope. Not gonna have it.
America was white, I mean, great. We want to make America white, I mean great, again.
The tension doesn't come from black people or other People of Color.
It come from a small group of white people who refuse to become more civilized.
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