Daniel Radcliffe discussing how he has racist friends but won’t end a friendship over their racist beliefs is exactly why we have a hard time trusting white “allies” and why we’re sick and tired of hearing white “allies” talk about how THEY aren’t racist.
Radcliffe’s exact quote is: “And I’m still friends with them because I don’t think that friendship should be drawn along those lines.”
And like… This is exactly what we mean when we talk about how being an ally means you have to actively help dismantle racism, especially within your communities and with other white people. If you’ve ever said “But I’M not racist so what do you want me to do??????” then this shit right here is what the fuck you’re supposed to do.
Pretending like your white friends holding racist beliefs is just some minor thing you disagree with like what toppings go best on pizza or if Coke is better than Pepsi is, to be quite honest, fucking disgusting.
And if you think that severing a friendship over racism is going too far then you perhaps need to re-evaluate how much of an ally you actually are.
It’s a huge goddamn privilege for racism to just be a minor inconvenience to a friendship and I can guarantee that your friends of color are wondering how you can be an ally when you sit there and allow your other friends to actively dehumanize them
This and the fact that he’s apparently starring in a movie that tries to humanise white supremacists has honestly made me SO dissapointed in him as a person…
Oh noooooo… 😦
It’s depressing to hear him spouting typical clueless priveleged ‘Ally’ nonsense like this…though sadly not all that surprising given that he’s never actually had to experience bigotry for himself and so has no damn idea what he’s talking about when he says how apparently we shouldn’t hate bigots ._.
There’s something to be said for the fact that if you want to try to change a racist white person’s ideas about racism and how they are indeed racist, you have to understand they’re not going to give a shit about anything a person of color says. I completely understand not wanting to be around racist people because it is exhausting and infuriating and it’s caused more than few problems with some of my own extended family members. But if you want to open people’s eyes, if you want them to learn anything, you have to continue to be in contact with them. Cutting ourselves off from one another just puts people back into their own silos of thought. Being in an echo chamber with people who think just like you and only just like you means you never learn anything different, you never experience anything different, you’re never exposed to different ideas. And you’re certainly never going to grow. So you’re probably going to stay racist as fuck if you don’t have any friends that you care about and trust who have a different belief than you that you can explicitly and implicitly learn about by watching them and their interactions with others, and talking to them about all the related things. Hate bigots all you want because I fucking do, too. But they’re never going to change one tiny bit if they only stay friends with all their other bigoted friends, tossing back and forth the same bigoted ideas, thoughts, words, and actions. (And no, I’m not saying you HAVE to stay friends with them. You have to take care of you and do what you need to do for you. But then we also get people saying don’t you dare cut those people off. Your job as a white ally is to argue with them, teach them, show them the example. And I agree. But everyone has their limits and I won’t argue for someone else telling you what your limit is.)
I had to go back and add to this conversation because I’ve just seen Daniel Radcliff’s interview with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. It’s an 8 minute interview, and they spend minutes 2-8 talking about Daniel’s new movie, “Imperium”, that’s about to come out. In the movie, he plays an FBI agent who is undercover with Skinheads. At about 6:10 Trevor asks him a question about how he gets the feel that in the movie it’s about having a conversation with the humans behind the Skinhead beliefs and if Daniel ever felt the same way?
(Apparently tumblr won’t let me post the video code, so click the link and you can go watch it on The Daily Show’s website. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/k8ya3n/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-exclusive—daniel-radcliffe-extended-interview )
Daniel’s response is basically more of what I said above:
“There is a temptation, obviously, from all of us, to dismiss these people as abhorrent and repulsive. But I think that we have to believe that people do not come out of the womb thinking these things. They are views they acquire and/or are taught. Um, so and I think that to try and change their minds, which I think we still have to believe there is a chance of doing, you have to engage them in a conversation. You can’t engage someone in a conversation when you start off from a basis of ‘You are just stupid and evil.’ Like they will never be, you will never- if you dehumanize them the way they dehumanize other people, then you’re never gonna be able to start that process.
And while I don’t think all minds can be changed- I’m sure there are some people that will take those awful beliefs to their grave- I do think that there’s, you know, a lot of the time, again, but it’s… Um. Vulnerable, unhappy people who are being preyed upon by sort of opportunistic ideologues who then, like, uh… What’s the word? Appeal to their sort of basest fears. Yeah.”You can’t even begin the process of changing someone’s mind if you won’t talk to them. Some people will never change their minds and no matter what you say you can’t change that. But if there’s a chance, then you should. Again, not everyone is up for this. No one can tell you what your limits are. But if you can, then you should.
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