Commentary: Why White People Don't See Racism

[Triana]

3. Probably similar to why many males don't see sexism...

...or don't believe it still exists. It isn't as blatant anymore as it used to be and they don't experience it much themselves, so wrongly assume it must not exist anymore. But most women experience it still, especially if they lead "non-traditional" lives or work in a male-dominated field - or if they're over 40 and single / non-parent or some such thing. People just don't know how to deal with women like that, assume they're lesbians, frigid, or that something's "wrong" with them - even other women!

It's very hard to see others' experiences and therefore to fully understand them -- but at the same time it's very ignorant to assume that you know what life is like as a "minority" living in our still rather selectively-tuned society - or really, what anyone else's life is really like.

Jane Elliot's Brown-eye, Blue-Eye experiment illustrates this pretty well - it's brutal but sometimes that's what it takes to crack open the shell of understanding built-in and seemingly invisible (except for those who are subject to them) societal biases: