Reddit reviews Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

Looking at this pew study 52% of white people think racism is a "Big Problem" vs 81% of black participants. So there is a large disconnect between races here. I'm white, but I'm firmly in the camp of believing people of color who say they are still being discriminated against, especially with things that aren't really reportable to anyone like microaggressions or being followed in a store. And then of course there are some things are really easy to generate hard numbers on like "Black men who commit the same crimes as white men receive federal prison sentences that are almost 20 percent longer on average" and that the FBI reporting double the amount of anti-Black hate crimes than anti-White even though there are about 5x more white people than black people in the US.

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Not sure about the gender break down of the hate crimes, violence is just generally an easy statistic to point to that almost everyone can agree is bad. For a more intersectional look at black womanhood specifically, I recently listened to Brittney Cooper's book Eloquent Rage, and thought it was really great, and I'm sure there are a ton of other resources with a quick google search.

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All of this to say, racism is a "Big Problem" no matter what 48% of white people think. So imagine being in a system where too many white people hate you, too many white government leaders try to take away your vote, too many of their white constituents keep voting for racist politicians, and too many of your white bosses donate to their campaigns. I don't think it seems like huge leap to start thinking that maybe a lot of white people are against you and that they also clearly have the power to oppress you. It would be a pretty huge leap, in my opinion as a white person in this same system, to think black people want to oppress me or would have much power to do so, and that's where the difference comes from.

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Because flipping the races removes the power dynamics in play, here's another analogy. Think early 1900s, before we had the 19th amendment, women obviously couldn't give themselves the right to vote. They could protest and march and advocate for themselves, but they had to have male allies to pass the laws. So imagine being a feminist woman at the time and you learn your new male friend supports women's suffrage, you might be excited that you have found an ally and claim they are "one of the good guys". It doesn't mean all men except that one guy is bad. It just means they run into too many men who don't support their rights. And it was probably the same with this woman, 48% of white people thinking racism isn't a problem is about 48% too many.