Blatant racism at a local Node meetup ... we as a community need to do so much more to help stamp out racism

After work yesterday we had a JavaScript meetup featuring some working sessions on Node, Angular and TypeScript that was sponsored and hosted by a local startup incubator. The event began with a respectful acknowledgement that as a community we stand against racism and all need to do more to ensure our community is a welcoming space for diverse voices.After a few talks, we broke off into smaller group discussions and I overhear some incredibly angry white dude in another group going off about what he called the “reverse racism” in the opening speech.One of the facilitators of the event was a woman of color who overheard him and asked why he thought that way and questioned whether as a white male he had an actual understanding of what racism actually feels like to be throwing around inflammatory phrases like “reverse racism”.He says “well, one of my friends is Black and I’ve never seen him followed around a store or get pulled over by he police”. To which the woman of color replies “funny you should mention that because when I’m with a white friend I don’t get pulled over or hassled either; it’s as if society marks me as ‘one of the good ones’ if and only if I’m with white people. Have you ever asked your ‘Black friend’ about his experiences when you’re not around?”The angry white guy stammered and stuttered a bit before saying “well I just assumed it would be the same, why wouldn’t it be?” The woman of color replies “why? There’s a very simple one word answer to that: RACISM.” This left the angry white guy confused and silent, after which he sank down into his chair, defeated and stunned, and didn’t say a word the rest of the meetup. The exact look of someone whose entire world view has been collapsed by someone bringing lived experiences against their misguided and privileged assumptions.

Submitted July 18, 2020 at 05:36PM by AssumingHyperbolist