This blog post, to pick a convenient strawman, seems to say that only Persons of Color (or POCs, as they use it) can tell when something is racism, and us horrible white folks need to pay attention and bend over backwards the moment a POC plays the race card.
Bull.
Counterexample from work: In the CUB, we have a bunch of TVs hooked up to various game consoles that students can check out controllers for from the front desk. Now, it's policy that they have to be WSU students and show student ID cards to check out a controller. I'm only at the front desk in passing, and I hear them explain this policy every week or so. A couple weeks ago, a non-student POC tried to check out a controller, and very quickly cried "racism" (quite loudly, too) while the front desk staffer explained the policy. No, it's not racism. No, the staffer isn't a horrible person. It's policy, nothing more, and that same staffer was explaining the exact same thing with the exact same words to those 4-H kids last week.
The whole blog gets on my nerves, because it seems to me to be (on a fairly regular basis) lumping all "white" people into a block, and also trying to induce white guilt on the whole mess.
Guess what? I'm not "white" (the stereotype), whatever that may be. I'm not even from the Caucasus mountains, so I'd question whether or not I'm "caucasian" (racially). For that matter, both terms are trying to categorize me based on my great-great-grandparents (or theirs, even), which I sorta take exception to. I was born in Kirkland, raised in the hills above Renton, and am now a WSU student. To try and guilt me into feeling bad about slavery in america multiple hundred years ago because people who looked like me were responsible strikes me as being just as much of a stereotype-based attack as any other - and as it tends to come from people who claim to be educated and aware of stereotypes and how important it is to deliberately avoid them, it makes me roll my eyes faster than most.
Yeah. Trying to blame me for something my ancestors did strikes me as being a bit silly, especially as the obvious response is "which ones?" By my paternal line, I'm a third-generation Swedish immigrant. The Hermanson family is a Swedish military family that dates back to the Napoleonic wars. The McCambridges are, obviously, Irish, and a few generations older to America. The Englunds are from Holland, and the Couriers, though an "Old American Family" (The Courier in Courier & Ives is a many-times-great granduncle) were Bostonian until they moved to Colorado and took up ranching. My family tree branches in so many directions that the hypothetical race-baiters might as well (and as accurately) blame me for the Crusades while they're at it - or the burning of Paris by the Vikings.
Okay, back to gender stereotypes. I was having a long and involved discussion with a friend the other day about love, attraction, and all that, and in response to my comment (approximately: "I have yet to really be attracted to anyone - girls who are friends are just "one of the guys" in my mental filing system. Maybe it's destiny, and I haven't met the right person yet, maybe I'm asexual... I really don't know."), he suggested that I might be gay. Now, it is the obvious option that I hadn't mentioned, and maybe I'm just massively overanalyzing, but it worked for Nakamura, right? Anyways, he went on to list a few reasons - I'm obviously not the conventional hypermasculine muscled build, I tend to be quiet and reserved, I actually have a fashion sense...
And as I'm sure you've noticed, those are all feminine stereotypes. "Queering" was mentioned in class - once someone is outed as gay, they are immediately expected to fit the aforementioned feminine stereotypes. Looking back at it, I can't help but be amused that it was queering in reverse. Because I'm not stereotypical hypermasculine outwardly, I must be queer - there must be something wrong with me.
(Due disclaimer - that last comment is most definitely not what was implied in the conversation. I'm stretching to address the comment as a social construct, rather than this particular conversation.)
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