Words and Steel

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

When you are white-passing, ANYONE who is white-passing (and white passing people can happen in a number of races and my thoughts on them aren’t specific to any race) needs to defer to the darker skinned obviously not-passing people. Even if you can only pass some of the time in some areas? That is a privilege. Parts of white privilege can be conditionally made to those people because of their white-passing.

This is different from light-skinned privilege to me, because not all light-skinned people pass and there is a distinct treatment difference between someone like say, Rashida Jones or Jessica Alba, and my extremely light skinned little cousin Zoe who could not pass in any world, anywhere despite being fairly light.

My stance on it is: Realize that you have an advantage. Realize that you will not only get paid more than your dark skinned counterparts, and depending on your location, you may get paid as much as any white person in your same stead, you may be treated by whites as though you are an equal, and even just walking down the street, the police are less likely to target you, people looking for violence may not realize that you are a potential target so easily. People who can pass for white have a massive new host of dating/romantic opportunities opened to them.

And avoid comments about how you wanna be darker and more “obviously” PoC so people will accept your heritage. Paleness in this society is not a disadvantage of detriment and acting like it doesn’t afford you privileges is just a dick move. It’s really offensive to people who can’t be darker ever and who are looking at you like “really? You wanna be treated like shit ten times worse than any treatment you’ve already gotten?”

Something that’s been on my mind a bit lately. Need to chew on this a bit more.

(via mewmewfoucault)