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The trouble with white people is that they largely believe the world revolves around them. It's not their fault really, a lot in the West really does revolve around whiteness, obviously. But it leads to a lot of frustrating conversations
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"Why are some of the protesters violent? Why are they calling to defund, even abolish the police? Don't they know how that makes me, Johnathan Smith Richardson an 'average voter', feel? Why, how will they ever get what they want without my personal endorsement?"
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People aren't talking about police abolition because they want to make white allies and win votes. They're talking about police abolition because they... want police abolition. No, they NEED it.
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Do you know how many white people call me a good black? Because I dress nice, speak well, I stayed in school, I don't like drugs and I don't confront people? Guess how much that matters when I interact with a cop. Guess how much worse it is for black people without my privileges.
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You'll notice that when white people want something, they'll just say they want it. If whites want to reopen during a pandemic there's no "how does the average black or Latino voter FEEL, given how they're most at risk for exposure to the disease??" They just demand and get
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Because there's an implicit understanding that the country "belongs" to a certain class that has been generous enough to share the space with everyone else. We're allowed to live here, and we have our rights to an extent, but the country belongs to "the average voter".
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There's a class element as usual. The average voter is "middle class" (a meaningless term that basically every American except the very, very poor thinks they fall into). The average voter is definitely cis and definitely straight and probably a man.
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The average voter (by virtue of being a voter) is a citizen and not a felon. The average voter... votes, so we eliminate people disenfranchised by the system or people (mostly leftists) who have lost faith in the system entirely and want a complete overhaul.
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People say they want a "free exchange of ideas", but the language of this exchange has already been crafted to the benefit of the ruling class