My only question on this Stanley was if I read this correctly (dubious), if the spectrum is Neo-Nazis - Trump - People with no issue with POC (but still are racist), is your friend Erica in the last group? I say her and not me because I caught myself at implicit bias literally this morning, but it sounded like she was a pretty advanced human. Not asking that anyone shed tears for us, but it seems daunting if the best we can individually achieve is being not problematic but still racist. Again, apologies if I misinterpreted that or missed the point completely.
Here's the thing. I'm a white male and I don't want to go through life feeling ashamed. I've got plenty of shame as it is, for all sorts of reasons. Am I racist? Oh, probably. I think most people, regardless of the various groups they identify with or belong to, prejudge others in harmful ways. That's something we can all look at within ourselves and work on. But if you say all white people are racist, oh man, that doesn't leave me anywhere to go. How can I feel good about myself if I'm a racist -- and being a racist is such a terrible thing? It's dehumanizing. I think it actually inflames racial tensions. Is it really necessary to bring down white people in order to uplift black ones? Can't we all be uplifted?
This is very insightful. As the family genealogist to a family that has been here since the early 1600s, I know exactly how many slaves and domestic servants my family had "employed" and it's a public record for anyone who wants to look at old U.S. Census records. For those white people who say "but I didn't own any slaves" I would say that you haven't looked hard enough. It would be a great Ph.D. project to pull the census records of slaveowners and then use Ancestry.com to track those families forward to today. That group of people owe a direct debt to slaves. My guess (using the data that ~35% of us are related to the passengers on the Mayflower) is it would be ~50% of all white people living today. The rest of the white people owe less. But we all owe something, and this will haunt us until someone confronts the rest of us with the data.
Thats a really smart observation. Thanks for sharing!
My only question on this Stanley was if I read this correctly (dubious), if the spectrum is Neo-Nazis - Trump - People with no issue with POC (but still are racist), is your friend Erica in the last group? I say her and not me because I caught myself at implicit bias literally this morning, but it sounded like she was a pretty advanced human. Not asking that anyone shed tears for us, but it seems daunting if the best we can individually achieve is being not problematic but still racist. Again, apologies if I misinterpreted that or missed the point completely.
Here's the thing. I'm a white male and I don't want to go through life feeling ashamed. I've got plenty of shame as it is, for all sorts of reasons. Am I racist? Oh, probably. I think most people, regardless of the various groups they identify with or belong to, prejudge others in harmful ways. That's something we can all look at within ourselves and work on. But if you say all white people are racist, oh man, that doesn't leave me anywhere to go. How can I feel good about myself if I'm a racist -- and being a racist is such a terrible thing? It's dehumanizing. I think it actually inflames racial tensions. Is it really necessary to bring down white people in order to uplift black ones? Can't we all be uplifted?
This is very insightful. As the family genealogist to a family that has been here since the early 1600s, I know exactly how many slaves and domestic servants my family had "employed" and it's a public record for anyone who wants to look at old U.S. Census records. For those white people who say "but I didn't own any slaves" I would say that you haven't looked hard enough. It would be a great Ph.D. project to pull the census records of slaveowners and then use Ancestry.com to track those families forward to today. That group of people owe a direct debt to slaves. My guess (using the data that ~35% of us are related to the passengers on the Mayflower) is it would be ~50% of all white people living today. The rest of the white people owe less. But we all owe something, and this will haunt us until someone confronts the rest of us with the data.