Ugh, I am so over #whitegirlproblems on Twitter. Sure, it started out kind of funny, because it was an acknowledgment of the incredible privilege a lot of white women have in America. But it quickly devolved into something that gives me an icky feeling.
Here are a few examples of what Twitter uses consider to be White Girl Problems:
-"My phone is fucked up... Great"
-"I was gonna work out but I'm hungry so.....oh well. I'm just gonna embrace my body and be a size 6. *sigh*"
-"I can't find a good sushi place anywhere in this town"
-"It's almost 3 a.m., and I am up looking at application's for prestigious graduate schools"
They are all bad, but that last one is especially bad. That's not funny, that's not clever, that's borderline racist. (I do appreciate the humor of the apostrophe, though.) As for the tweets that identify everyday events and call them "white girl problems," all that is doing is creating false divisions between skin colors. Do these people really think that people with different skin colors are so different that they can't share these simple experiences? It's so annoying.
It's particularly annoying because, in the hands of a clever person, #whitegirlproblems can be pretty funny. Two examples:
-"My best friend resembles Justin Bieber"
-"Maroon 5"
I just wish that the unimaginative, non-clever people would stop trying to jump on the bandwagon because all they're doing is making everyone who uses the hashtag look like a racist douche.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Maybe #firstworldproblems would be more accurate? I'm guessing that #whitegirlproblems isn't meant to be racist, but a name change might be helpful to the cause...
"...that's borderline racist." i think you mean prejudiced. maybe disrespectful?
white people, by definition, cannot be victims of racism in our culture. racism is not an attitude or a belief held by an individual. racism is the collection of disadvantages a racial group encounters in a society because of their race. it's a system. white people, as you have pointed out many times on this blog, are the beneficiaries of extraordinary privilege. each of those tweets speaks to some amount of privilege.
personally, as a white woman who grew up in super-white areas, i never even knew some of these issues existed until i went away to a very diverse university. recently, in trying to understand the racial issues my (future, bi-racial) kids might encounter, i read "why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?" by beverly daniel tatum. it helped me understand what racism really is and why racial identity is so important. highly recommended.
but, i digress. while some of those tweets may be in bad taste, they're not racist. i do see truth in your statement that those kind of comments might create "false divisions between skin colors." and, it's frustrating that many people (white and otherwise) believe white people are a non-race, or have no "racial identity." maybe if white people worked on understanding how their own background and race informs the way they think/act/perceive life, they'd be more curious about, and accepting of, other races/cultures.
so here's my #whitegirlproblem: whining about racism against whites.
(don't know if you just meant that post to be a rant, but it was very thought-provoking for me :) thanks)
I'm pretty sure litigious meant that the comments were racist against people who aren't white, because they couldn't possibly be experiencing the same problem of choosing a grad school. ...#whitegirlproblems - as in, something only white girls could complain about.
ahhhhhh. got it.
*smacks forehead*
Post a Comment