When World War 3 Almost Happened, I Wanted To Laugh Like a White Man
The impulse to laugh at the expense of others is a white privilege that people of color inappropriately want to reach sometimes. Here’s how it manifested as a war was about to break out
I learned the word ‘empathy’ in the third grade when my White teacher told us, “Do not waste food! Think about the poor little kids in Africa who don’t have any.” All of my classmates, who were all white, thought I was from there. I guess I fit the profile. It’s weird to think that when I was eight years old, my classmates were taught to pity kids from a far-away land whose only characteristic was poverty. Consequently, they must have pitied me, too.
Back at home, my brothers and I needed to eat everything on our plate before leaving the dinner table or the kitchen floor because, my mom would say, “we might be poor, but some kids your age back home don’t have much food.” My white classmates put themselves in the shoes of little kids in Africa and that’s why they didn’t waste food; I was kind of doing the same thing, so I could easily convince myself that I was just like them.
When you’re first taught to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you don’t know that those shoes…
