My 'Dear Fellow White People' thread addresses many of the ultimately hollow excuses White Folks make for not supporting the #BlackLivesMatter movement. It will in time shine light on the irrefutability & ubiquitous nature of both white privilege & systemic racism
One of the great many problems with White America is it doesn't respect Grace or Dignity. Only Violence. Black people are getting pushed into a blood-drenched box and the outcomes are as predictable as the tides.
While unarmed black people were getting murdered in the streets by cops month in and month out, our fellow white people thought 'Black Lives Matter' was bad because in their overwhelming, breathtaking privilege these empathetically vacuous souls thought it should be 'All Lives Matter.'
The quiet, solemn dignity and pure grace of the #TakeAKnee movement?
"Sacrilege!"
"Outrageous!"
"How *dare* they?"
Guess what our fellow white people'll think if black people show up in the town square armed to the teeth like the primarily white covidiots? What blood-drenched state response will they find ways to excuse, with words to the effect of a shrug and a 'they had it coming'?
Black folks have been backed into a blood-drenched box for a long time now. The last thing you should be is surprised when the box blows up.
If you thought #BlackLivesMatter should've been All Lives Matter & #TakeAKnee was sacrilege & now you're going to tsk tsk *anything* about the black community's response to yet another public police murder of yet another unarmed black man? The race problem is YOU. It's ALWAYS been YOU.
Any of my fellow white people that'd like to stop *BEING* the race problem can do so by standing with people of colour & using our privilege however we can to help them out of the blood-soaked box that systematic & situational racism's been backing them into for whole generations.
Listen to & elevate black voices. Join their cause. Equality benefits all & until the problem's fixed there'll be more racist murders, riots & burning. Stand with them. If it might save their lives stand IN FRONT of them, between them & the next of many Officer Chauvins.
If that terrifies you imagine being a black mom or dad watching your son leave for school every day having instructed as best you can how not to get killed by cops for no good reason, knowing even if he does exactly as you say he's never safe from getting murdered by the state.
August 29, 2020
"Alexa, what is systemic racism?"
Many of my fellow white folks treat the identification of white privilege as an accusation, like being called a racist. It's not at all "your fault" for having been born into it. It *is* your fault should you continue to deny it's existence & not work to make change.
America's mass shooting epidemic's comprised almost entirely of young white males, an overwhelming majority of whom are alive today thanks to painstakingly cautious police arrests. America's other shooting epidemic involves cops shooting unarmed black people, often in the back. It takes a whole lot of willful blindness to continue to not see it
AUGUST 31, 2020 - The Confederate Monuments and the "Preserving Our Heritage Canard"
Let's stipulate that less than 0.0000001% of knowable History is taught by reading some plaque on a statue. The only valuable knowledge surrounding Confederate monuments is when they were put up, by whom & for what purpose.
These statues celebrate men who took up arms vs their own country & lost. But for the benevolence/thoughtfulness of President Lincoln they'd all've been hanged, & rightly, for treason. Not until many decades later did America's racist South build monuments to them. Why?
Why were so many Confederate monuments built at the same time as the Civil Rights movement, the fight for the right for Black people to vote, nearly 100 years post Civil War? The question answers itself. The only history preserved in these statues is one of irrefutable racism from those that built them.
America's 1st real traitor, Benedict Arnold's name became synonymous with treason & remains so to this day. You'll find no statues of him in America & rightly so. You don't find statues of Hitler in Germany either. History's losers don't typically get statues. Only in America.
What's more evil, Hitler's attempted Genocide or the Slavery America's Confederate traitors fought tooth & nail to perpetuate? It's not a contest worth exploring & neither represents IN ANY WAY a heritage to be proud of. Not by decent people anyways.
The Nazi #Swastika and the #ConfederateFlag aren't exactly the same thing but they're not all that different either, which may provide a clue why we all too often see them flown from the same porches. In 2020 both are symbols of purposeful racist hate, not history or heritage.
And while we're at it
Sept 19, 2020
Perfectly stated. Kentucky musician explains Black Lives Matter to white Kentuckians:
***** All for now *****