Today at my college it was the “red card to racism” day where they encourage you to wear red in order to raise awareness against racism. It got me thinking “what does this actually achieve?” Most people in the college don’t wear red anyway, it is also only a minority of people who donate. But that doesn’t mean they are racist.
There are other similar campaigns where you would for example wear pink to show support to people with breast cancer. But if you don’t wear pink that doesn’t mean you think breast cancer is good.
The reasons I want to discuss this are because:
I want to know if you think it is a good idea or not and why
I want to know if your school/college/workplace does anything similar
If you think it actually helps the charities if you wear the colour but don’t donate
Personally I think showing solidarity with something is a good gesture and if you are unable to donate we don’t all have spare change or money we can just give away then raising awareness is still a good idea. However, raising awareness only helps to an extent anyway. Just wearing a certain colour won’t stop racism or cure breast cancer although it is nice to show support.
I am curious to here what you all think, please respect each others opinions!
Oh man I remember we had this conversation in one of my threads. I did mention that when I was 13 years old and it was Cancer Awareness Day, most of the girls given me s**t just because I didn’t wore pink on that day. At least I donated money and that’s more than enough. Seriously, these girls acted like it was some kind of religion and they tried to guilt trip me.
Even though it’s nice to show support, it’s not necessary to tear other people down just because they choose not to wear the colour on that day.
Hm, red for racism doesn’t seem very actionable and like racism is pretty visible? But maybe if it’s in a place that doesn’t like to talk about it, it could help.
Yeah, that makes sense. I guess it can be helpful, but don’t think it’s the most effective way to protest, personally.
Especially since racism is so insidious and easy to hide nowadays. Like someone could wear red but only hire white people because they don’t realize their own internal bias against a candidate with a non-white sounding name or something…
That’s really true, plus there is this girl I know and she’s said one or two racial slurs in my presence (I told her not to and explained why it was wrong) yet she still wears red for red card to racism.
Wearing red doesn’t mean you’re not racist you could just be hiding it or even unaware
I hope she stoped saying them after you explained why they were wrong.
I personally think that it’s just inevitable that most people will say something racist/ablist/sexist (unintentionally or not) and that they can be redeemed if they correct their behavior (I hate cancel culture at every little thing) and work on spreading awareness themselves. It’s all about reflection and growth, I think.
But I know that people can be sensitive about being called racist like it’s the worst thing you could be called (like worse than racial slurs - which obviously it’s not at all). And it’s hard to know when/if apologies are genuine or if they’re just saying it because they got caught (like celebrities and their fake-sounding tweet apologies).
Maybe if wearing red sparks the difficult conversations that I think are needed to actually get rid of racism it’s helpful but if it just makes people feel good to self-identify as a non-racist (however accurate that is).
In my opinion you shouldn’t be forced to do it as it is volunteer work and it’s your choice whether you want to donate or wear the color.
Unfortunately we don’t do any of these at school, apparently the only important thing for teachers is Maths, Science, studying and studying…
I go to a catholic college and before that a catholic high school, altruism is part of Christianity so we are heavily encouraged to take part but in high school we were forced. I love donating to charities but it should be because we want to not because we have to.
I think it’s a good idea because it’s something simple you can do to show that you support it, we don’t do that thing necessarily, but at my school we dress up as certain colors some days just to be fun, and it’s just a fun thing to do and I think there’s no harm in it and it can help.
We are having a pink day in a few weeks but no big deal if u dont wear it. We also have orange day which is against bullying. But again, if you don’t wear it, it’s no big deal to me.
It’s a good thing to do, but you shouldn’t have to. Back when I was in school we did that, but you had to bring along a gold coin if you wanted to raise awareness, to donate.
