Race is a social construct, like money, work, marriage, acudemia, corporations, government, gender roles, etc. And like other social constructs, race is real in the sense that it affects our lives. Here in the USA, whiteness is the default so white people can often get away with ignoring race. But if you ignore it too much, you'll run into the same kind of trouble as you'll run into if you ignore any other social construct. Especially if you're not white.

If you're white and actively working on challenging and undoing racism, then you're an ally and you can privately take exception to statements by BIPOC folks about whiteness. But jumping in on posts like this to take public exception is distracting and self-centering. Not cool.

I encourage all Euro-mutts to consider and challenge their implicit racist conditioning that we all receive early in life from the media and often from our families. Ignoring a problem doesn't solve it.