Earning the angered previous President Trump’s attention, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used her platform as one of the higher up, influential people in America to speak against the way racism is looked at. Ocasio-Cortez is a young woman in her late twenties that was elected in office as a House of Representative. Earning this seat promotes Ocasio-Cortez the power to use her outspoken voice to viewers online who were misled when it comes to having people all across America are viewing racism. Racism is always looked at by what is racist and what is not, but what most do not understand it is more about the way people use their words that make a statement racist.
Voicing her opinion in a progressive political way, Ocasio-Cortez and her white boyfriend, Riley Roberts have come together to give viewpoints on racism in a more diverse way. Reaching out to her followers on Instagram, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exercised her rights of speech alongside Roberts to showcase that racism was more common than people think. It is statistically verified that many people of white descent believe they could not be racist due to their own beliefs nor believe that what they say could possibly affect people of color. Riley Roberts believes this to be mistakenly untrue and highly biased whether people can see the truth between the lines or not. Roberts briefly explained that it is important to talk to other white people about racism and pretty much anybody who believes they are not racist. Nowadays many people hear the word racist and try anything possible to steer clear from being deemed by the category. However, just steering clear from being categorized is not always the right thing to go about when handling potential racism. Racism itself can be used as a teaching experience for anyone who tries to dodge the subject, merely because if someone were to say something that was racist, a simple,”Hey that is not right,” could justify the difference in the statement being right or wrong. When using racism as a teaching moment, people should look more in-depth at the things they say and should try defining those words by if they are right or wrong, not racist or non-racist. Roberts believes that if people could recognize the things they say from a racist viewpoint, many conversations can potentially move along a path that entirely steers clear from racism and other cultural differences.
Being able to define the wrongs and rights in statements can potentially contribute the development of learning the way to speak rather than pinpointing someone as a racist because the other party may not agree. Ocasio-Cortez spoke briefly about the defensive mechanism people use to cope and suggested that if we, as people, are more open to learning about racist things, then later on in our lifetimes we could cope with statements without becoming defensive over a simple conversation. The couple urged their followers who want to help the stance on racism to inform more Americans that speaking on topics in a right or wrong scenario, could possibly change the verdict of the two parties labeling each other as racists due to their lack of having things in common. It has been researched that the word ‘racism’ can hold a lot of weight in cultural power and when people hear the word they automatically get defensive and try to stand on the things they say rather than thinking over the way they stated the words. If a small change in thinking could be made possible, racism could potentially come to an end in many cultures.
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