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Is Racism just the “man or bear” thing with foreigners?

  • 08-05-2024 12:23pm
    #1
    FlataytoOne
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11 ✭


    So online, I’ve seen this thing where women get asked:

    “you’re coming down from a tough mountain hike, alone in the woods walking, miles from anything else, no phone. You come to a fork in the road and the two paths wind away into the distance, both leading back to shelter/home/comfort/the finish. On each path you see a figure. On one, a bear. On the other, a man that you don’t know. Which path will you pick?“

    The debate starts when the women all pick the bear, because they fear the man, or rather the unknown potential threat this man poses as opposed to the known threat of the bear, and the men lose their minds because hashtag not all men etc etc etc and the women say this is what we’re trying to tell you about men and round and round it goes…. (This is AH, I’m sure that debate’s been thrashed about, not looking for the rematch here.)

    Shower thought.

    So much anti-racism activism is all about convincing us that foreigners aren’t arseholes and we shouldn’t be afraid of them. What would happen if we swapped “man” for “foreigner”?

    Do we need to have a conversation about whether we can snuff out people’s fear of one while making allowances for the fear of the other?

    Or perhaps we need to give people the space to have those fears in a safe, non-hatred mongering manner? Perhaps make it moot whether you do fear them or not because (going back to the woods analogy) the Mountie who’s just arrived at your side will take care of the threat on your path whichever you choose.

    What say ye?

    (Note: this is my first big one back for a long time, mods. Feel free to put it in the proper spot if the front of AH isn’t where it goes or it causes an online riot!)



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