Adam Dorsey.com

Hipster Racism is still Racism

“And that’s where this vein of hipster racism starts. It tests the idea that anything wrapped with enough irony can be transformed into something else. The more uncool the raw materials are — trucker hats, ugly T-shirts, mustaches, smoking crack — the better the trick. What it really does is say, “I do not care what other people think (aside from my immediate social set who are in on the joke).” That others aren’t in on the joke — watch me make racist jokes! — is the joke. So what if someone’s ironic racist or even real racist, right? Repeat the process enough and you get something like “What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.”

‘Girls’ Writer Is Learning There’s No Such Thing as Ironic Racism - Entertainment - The Atlantic Wire

Every three months or so, I get really really upset about “hipster racism.” It’s a phenomenon that I discovered on my own, coined on my own, but it’s nice to see that the rest of the world feels similarly. Wait, “nice” is the wrong word. It would be “nice” if it didn’t exist.

I have unfollowed people on twitter because they were hipster racist. I have stopped hanging out with friends in real life because they are hipster racist. Because these people do not “mean any harm by it,” does not change the fact that they’re being racist, spreading racist ideas, hurting the feelings of the people around them, and —WORST OF ALL— being ignorant.

Because that’s where this hipster racism really comes from, a place of ignorance. These are white, middle-class twenty-somethings who grew up in healthy families where there was no racism. They went to mostly white schools where there was no racism. They lived in a white, middle-class bubble with no racism, and now they’ve grown up and they think that racism is an old thing that their grandparents used to have. So they dust off this vintage racism and they try it out—and just like the thick-rimmed glasses and vinyl records they’ve rediscovered—they play with this racism in an ironic way, and they find it hilarious. They find it quaint. It’s such a foreign idea to them, because they’ve grown up and lived in such sheltered communities, they find it hilarious. But it’s not. And when someone points out that they’re being racist, they laugh and say, LOL OBAMA IS IN WHITE HOUSE, NO SUCH THING AS RACISM.

But that’s not true at all. And people who have lived with racism their whole lives, people who see it all around them, know it’s all still there. And racism is still racism, even if it’s ironic. 

And you can’t have the n-word. You can’t say it even if it’s the title to a rap song, and you can’t say it even if you’re just around your white friends, and you can’t say it at all, okay?

I haven’t seen “Girls” yet, and I hear good things, and I’ll probably check it out and like it, but this isn’t even really about that anymore.