15h • Whiteness
Chamieka on whiteness and cognitive dissonance
We explore cognitive dissonance in my course, it one of the biggest barriers in this work. Here's Chamieka on the topic:
"You know.
If I ever went back for a PhD, my dissertation would be on white people and cognitive dissonance.
Because I keep seeing the same thing play out. Every time a story gets posted, here come the comments. “This has to be rage bait.” “There’s no way this is real.” And I’m just sitting here like… why are you acting surprised? Where have you been?
Do you really think white people don’t think like this? Don’t say things like that? Don’t move like that? At some point, that’s not you being unaware. That’s you choosing not to see it.
This is why so many Black folks feel like there are two America’s. Because this country doesn’t move the same depending on who you are. One version gets the benefit of the doubt, safety, and grace, while the other has to explain, defend, and survive the same situations just to be believed.
A girl raised to fear Black men. A mother panicking because her daughter is having a baby with a Black man. Two college students pushing their Black roommate out. This isn’t rare. This is regular. People deal with this every day.
But instead, you start picking it apart. Looking for a reason it can’t be true. Questioning the person, the details, the timing. Anything so you don’t have to sit with what it actually means. Because if it’s real, then something about how you’ve been seeing things doesn’t hold up. And a lot of y’all don’t want to touch that.
You move through the world like white is the default. Like it’s the default setting. So when something ugly comes from that same place, it feels wrong to you. Again, NOT because it’s rare, but because it doesn’t match what you’ve been telling yourself.
So you push it away. Call it fake. Call it exaggerated. Call it anything but what it is. That’s the dissonance.
It’s not that you don’t understand. It’s that understanding would cost you something, and you’re not trying to pay that.
Some people are fucking awful. Racist. Bigoted. Fully bought into every stereotype and misconception about Black people that this country spent centuries building into them. None of it is new. This is just what it looks like when history works the way it was always meant to.
Yes, white people think these ways. Not all of them the same way, but enough, and in enough places, that it shapes what the rest of us have to move through every single day. And yes, everything in America is about race. Until you can stop rushing to clean it up or explain it away, you’re going to keep missing it."
Check out her letters from her followers. I posted some here for practice, search for case study CiW lettes to Chamieka.
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Chamieka on whiteness and cognitive dissonance
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