Okay so anti-racism allies, let's talk.

I forget a lot of times that, despite masto being a hella progressive space (at times), it is still very very very white. Like hella white. And even though many of the white folks on my end of the fediverse identify as anti-racist... sometimes the unbelievable whiteness still slips through.

When people of color talk about their experiences with racism, it is never one small thing. It's a lot of things. It's a tsunami of things.

We don't wake up one day and just decide to blame all of our problems and our incompetences on white people.

From the instant we become aware of our place in the world, we are told again and again and again that, because of our race, we will struggle. And when we forget, when we surpass, when we get a little bit of happiness, racism knocks us down again.

So when we say "Wow, white people are really fucking horrible to us," it isn't JUST because Becky Sue cut us in line at Starbucks. It's because of that, and the 39875297592789871 other things that have happened to us without consequence since we were 4 years old.

When racist shit happens to us, half of the time, we don't even *realize* that it was racist at first. We lose on promotions at work and think, "What if I just wasn't good enough?" "Maybe Becky Sue was having a bad day." "Maybe I misheard and he didn't actually say 'nigger'."

From the very earliest stages, we give the benefit of the doubt. We excuse away and convince ourselves that we just misunderstood, that there is some other angle. We need more information, let's not jump to conclusions.

Blaming white supremacy takes time and understanding. We have a tsunami of occurrences that no longer make it a coincidence.

We start to notice every twitch, every gaze that lingers too long, every word and its connotations, every pattern of behavior and word of praise and insult.

The reason white people do not recognize racism is because you don't have 24 years of experience studying, dodging, and crumbling under it.

So when we say, "Well this was hella racist," maybe you should just trust us on this?