MORE FROM HUFFPOST
MORE FROM HUFFPOST
White Racism
A assistant professor of sociology at Florida Gulf Coast University is trying to move the conversation forward with a “White Racism” course, despite receiving harassing and racist emails.
At the end of the day, white supremacy has traumatized both black and white people. Black people are afraid of a government which has not and will not protect them; white people are afraid that perhaps their injustice, or complicity in the dispensing of injustice, will come back to haunt them.
In a presentation of the theses contained in her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, author Joy DeGruy, Ph.D. asked the mixed-race audience, "How many of you think there is white racism?"
WHAT'S HAPPENING
WHAT'S HAPPENING
I asked Robert Lee what he would say to Dylann Roof if he had a chance to talk to him, and how God would judge the mass murderer. He said: "You crucified Jesus yet again on the cross of white supremacy."
Right-wing hate groups do not cause prejudice in the United States -- they exploit it. What we clearly see as objectionable bigotry surfacing in Extreme Right movements, is actually the magnified form of oppressions that swim silently in the familiar yet obscured eddies of "mainstream" society.
While I get how White people can "feel" that this is their reality -- they are targets of racism -- we must not allow this perspective to drive the future of our conversations on race.
Say the magic words and end the conversation. Say the magic words, and uncomfortable facts and figures disappear. Responsibility? Gone. Complicity? Vanquished, with a phrase.
The problem with discussing "issues of race," is that it dummies down the issue of racism to an individual level, when the real problem is at the macro level.
