Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: FSU PUBLICATIONS DEPARTMENT
My generation was raised to believe that racism doesn't exist anymore.

Discrimination was more tangible in the past. There were restaurants where Black people couldn’t eat. There were bus seats that Black people couldn’t occupy. There were streets Black people couldn’t live in. There were schools Black people couldn’t attend. Back then, although things were much worse, the discrimination was undeniable. Today, as far as regulations go, someone’s skin colour doesn’t prevent them from living, sitting, eating, or studying in any distinct place. Movements towards equality are significant and have millions of supporters. Discrimination is now considered a crime in many countries, including the United States. Nobody you know owns slaves. There have been Black presidents and congressmen. We are progressing. And this beautiful progress has formulated a terrible fallacy that “there are no racists in America” (Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates).

My generation was raised to believe that racism doesn’t exist anymore. Like Tinkerbell, we thought, it could only exist if we believed it did. That skin colour doesn’t matter. We are all one; we are all human; we are all the same. Don’t be fooled; however, racism isn’t gone. It is disguised. People with dark skin have had to take on uncountable barriers, while most white people didn’t even acknowledge the existence of these barriers. The existence of racism lies in the fact that white people are rarely the ones to fight it, talk about it, spread awareness, and confront it.

That’s what separates a white person’s world from their world. White people never had an obligation to do anything about it; Black people never had the choice of not doing. While white people may not own slaves, call anyone the n-word, or mistreat other people because of their skin colour, that doesn’t put them in the right. By settling with their rights and not realizing that by conforming, they were impeding other people from having theirs.

Navigator. Londons student lifestyles magazine.