A black person liked him, so therefore he's not racist.
Do you even realize how racist you are being with that bullshit?
It's number 7 in the
10 Defensive Reactions to White Privilege That Make No Damn Sense – But Are Super Common
7. ‘I Know an Exception to the Rule’ (Or ‘My Black Friend Said Something Different’)
I have to wonder what white privilege deniers would do if they didn’t have Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey to point to. Maybe they’d have to realize the realities of everyday Black folks can’t be invalidated by just two people?
Then again, you’ve always got that Black guy you knew in high school – you heard
he’s never had a problem with police, so police brutality
must not be an issue. Or your cousin’s co-workers wife, who’s Asian and doesn’t mind
questions about where she’s from. And don’t forget that Latina you once found in a YouTube comments section, who takes
hypersexual stereotyping as a compliment.
The existence of exceptions to the rule is no reason to dismiss the experiences of so many others, and talking about white privilege doesn’t mean saying that every single white person has one experience, and every single person of color has another.
Once again, it’s about talking about a
system that disadvantages groups of people.
You could take any issue – say,
“positive” racial stereotypes – and find lots of different people of color with varying experiences with it. Some would say that so-called “positive” stereotypes dehumanize them. Some would say these stereotypes just make them laugh.
When
Kai Cheng Thom wrote about being a “bad” example of an Asian, she didn’t bother trying to prove that every single Asian person suffers as a result of “good Asian” stereotypes, because that’s not the point.
It would be a shame to miss her really important points about “positive” stereotypes as a weapon of white supremacy just because you know an exception to the rule.