r/socialjustice101 • u/notonketamine • 6d ago
Are my moms beliefs about racial equality extreme or are they in alignment with the majority of the pro-black community?
Hello, let me preface this by saying my mom is 100% white, and I am hispanic white. I really would like to know from black people only if her beliefs align with you and people fighting for racial equality in general. She's very vocal about being inherently racist, how America was built on racism, and paying reparations (which I agree are all important issues to acknowledge) but I believe she takes it too far. She has always been an advocate for equal rights for the majority of her life, but recently she's been expressing beliefs such as she needs to degrade herself and give up all self worth in order to uplift the black community and is willing to be treated any which way by black people for simply existing as a white person. I'm well aware of the fact that your community suffered a tremendous amount of mistreatment and bigotry and still does but I can't help but to think that your desire for equality is to be respected by and receive the same opportunities as white people, not to make them suffer eternally, and that your intention is to come from a place of love and not recycled hate. I posed the question, "If an organization was telling you to physically harm yourself to show your solidarity with the black community, would you?" and her response was "I just might. You're not wrong." As far as I know she gets all of her knowledge from TikTokers (She uses this app to an unhealthy degree imo), and has told me that these are people in their 20's. But rarely, if ever, does she listen to a public speaker for any well known organizations. She doesn't really have anyone to talk to so she always brings these topics up to me, and every time she talks about it she gets very heated and I feel a lot of negative energy which is unintentionally being directed toward me and it's been getting more and more difficult to absorb. It's only recently that I put my two cents in because I personally don't enjoy her perpetuating the idea that I, myself, need to fear/hate white people and that every white person on the planet is evil and a MAGA supporter, and she denounces my belief to live a life openly allowing every human being to show me who they are before I cast uneducated judgements. For instance, I went to a lake to take a walk, and I told her that it was near a very southern white neighborhood, and she told me that as a hispanic gay man I need to stay away from any white person there because they're MAGA, and I told her that that's not a fact and I'm not going to fear someone I don't know (Yes, I realize that me being able to say that is a privilege), but she insisted that factually every white person within the vicinity of where I was had to be a Trump supporter. Her beliefs that she should be worthless in the eyes of a black person concerns me because right now she is living states away from me and her ex boyfriend, who is a black man that has physically and mentally abused her, is her only resource for things like transportation and groceries, and by her newfound logic if he were to ever put his hands on her again she would deserve it. Am I wrong for not being okay with this?
Edit: Grammar corrections, added example, and sentence restructuring