It’s because the bar on what is and isn’t racist has been lowered massively. Fifteen years ago, dreadlocks were A-Okay to wear for any race, for example. Now a man like Justin Bieber or Jeremy Lin is labeled a borderline racist for “culturally appropriating” a hairstyle that is ‘historically black’. Which is funny because, it isn’t — Celtic tribesmen and Greek warriors wore dreads thousands of years before Afro-Carribbeans did.
When Lin was called out on his choice of hairstyle by a fellow basketball player, the Chinese-American quickly pointed out that the man criticizing him had a tattoo with Chinese characters on his skin. Lin could adopt a new hairstyle any time, but a tattoo is for life. He wasn’t offended one bit, however, and just wanted to keep his dreadlocks and be left in peace. But yeah.. shitstorms ensued, entire ‘opinion pieces’ were written about the horrors of cultural appropriation displayed by Lin.
Twenty years ago, when I was a young feller, my mother had her hair braided by a black co-worker, a Carribbean lady. She wore dreads for a few months until she tired of the high level of maintenance required by the hairstyle. Today, she would have been labeled “racist” for this. Or at the very least “culturally insensitive”. Never mind the fact that it was a lady from ‘the culture’ itself who insisted she try the hairstyle and braided it for her.
You meet “racists” everywhere only if you’re actively looking for racists everywhere. If you’re some sort of Sherlock Holmes on the lookout for micro-aggressions and cultural insensitivity around every corner. If you’re a normal person, you don’t… you just see people. Some are racist. Some are not. Very few are extreme enough to be rightfully labeled as any sort of ‘supremacist’, the Louis Farrakhan’s and David Duke’s of this world are a dying breed, believe it or not.
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