Didja ever notice? On discussions on race, White folks love to keep the focus on themselves. Liberals on how much pain they feel about the persistence of racism, conservatives on how awful and epidemic "reverse racism" is. But try and focus the discussion on what obligations racial dialogue and progress requires of Whites, and suddenly they can't turn the focus away from Whites fast enough.
Today I guest-presented in an African-American history class about Black Conservatism and how White folks can engage with it. It's not that there were no useful contributions, but I fought a persistent (and losing) battle to try and figure out what Whites had to do to engage this group. And yet, the responses kept being "Black people need to enter into coalition politics" (but Black Conservatives are skeptical about the utility of coalition work) or "Blacks need to work with and trust White people" (which begs the question and doesn't properly put the onus on Whites to earn back the trust they've lost) or "Black Conservatism antagonizes White people" (well, maybe it's Whites that should stop throwing temper tantrums, then?).
It's like pulling teeth, trying to get Whites to even think about anti-racism strategies in which they are responding to Black concerns, not dictating the terms of the debate.
I agree, but don't see much of a solution to it. Any majority is going to place its own feelings--whether justified or not--front and center because people are selfish.
ReplyDelete(This is why advocating, say, reparations is a good way to lose elections.)
Cash reparations are just a dumb idea (though not quite as awful as the Chappelle's Show episode made them out to be). I oppose them not out of selfishness but out of the knowledge that no matter the amount of the check, once it is written, white people will never again consider doing anything that actually fixes the problems caused by slavery and Jim Crow. This is also the motive behind some conservatives' advocacy of cash grants and no other benefits to welfare recipients -- "Hey, they got a check, not my problem if they can't get health insurance or afford housing..."
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