Honestly, even as a minority. It gets exhausting. You sometimes just want to forget about the awful stuff and enjoy yourself.
I can't tell you how often I've arrived at a party, and once people realize where I'm from, they start asking about my experiences, how shit must suck, how the odds are stacked against us blah, blah, blah.
I appreciate it, but damn, sometimes I just want to drink and talk music, sports or movies.
I'm half-brown and a variation of that happens to me occasionally. "Do you feel that you're heard?" Part of me accepts it as coming from a naive but well-intentioned place. Part of me also knows it's people rushing to tokenize, infantilize and be the first to win social points with everyone claiming to "care so much" about "my experience", and all that. Of course, it's all performative bluster.
Part of me knows the very fact they assume I'm a victim based solely on skin color and ethnic traits is effectively a declaration that I'm an outsider and not their equal. So in the "old days" they might have assumed I was a thief, untrustworthy, dangerous, etc. Now I'm just pitiable, like some kind of rescue puppy. Hurray for progress.
When people find out I'm quite successful and don't need their pity or charity, some are disappointed. Some pivot to quizzing me on "oh, so what are you doing for the brown community?" I dunno, what are you doing for the white community?
Some have basically implied I didn't understand my own oppression. That all this stuff is internalized. Well, thank goodness I have the kindly progressives to explain my life to me better than I know it myself. Good thing I have them to do the thinking for me.
None of this stuff started happening until around 15 years ago. Before that people just treated me like a person. I do believe the world will grow out of this phase and go back to seeing people more as individuals but I wish it wasn't taking so long.
It's not really possible to not care about politics. To not care about politics would be to not care about anything.
And before you bring up nihilism, you should know that nihilism is fundamentally impossible. Values are physiological. We have no choice but to care about things like food and water, which are inherently political. No one has ever actually successfully been a nihilist. It's just edgy redditors larping.
That's not an indication that they don't care about politics. Voting is a complex decision that is influenced by a million factors. It's far more indicative of a lack of trust in the system and a lack of belief in their ability to actually impact it than anything else.
Ask those people if they care about the tangible effects of politics, things like where their food and water comes from, whether their nation is at war or not, whether or not their society is segregated, etc. and they all care.
Not voting can be seen as a vote for the status quo, I suppose. The status quo doesn’t change much based on red and blue party lines, day to day life remains unchanged for the vast majority.
Politics bans also cause as many headaches because people argue over what is political and what’s not.
If the Arsenal subreddit posts a video of Mamadani sitting down with our greatest modern player Thierry Henry is that inherently political? Even though he’s only talking to Henry as a fan himself?
Is mentioning our former beloved manager Wenger and his new suggested as a FIFA consultant political because of FIFAs recently political moves with the US?
And it becomes even more difficult when it comes to the women’s game due to homosexuality being more prevalent and it being a political target. But even then, what about when the players themselves decide to make political statements?
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u/TributeToStupidity Aug 17 '26
“Oh, so you just don’t care about politics?”
Nah dude, I just don’t care to talk about politics with you on this random sports sub. There’s a very important difference there