To my white friends, the time for talk has passed. Now is the time for work.

[marble falls]

Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2020, 04:34 PM - Edit history (1)

To my white friends, the time for talk has passed. Now is the time for work.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/12/my-white-friends-time-talk-has-passed-now-is-time-work/

By Brian S. Lowery
June 12, 2020 at 3:25 p.m. CDT

(Brian Lowery is a professor of organizational behavior and senior associate dean for academic affairs at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.)


<snip>

The question I would pose to my white friends: Are you okay? Are you okay after seeing a Minneapolis police officer casually pressing the life out of George Floyd? Are you okay after learning that police rushed in and shot Breonna Taylor, a woman not accused of wrongdoing, in her apartment? Are you okay after watching three white men chase and kill Ahmaud Arbery? Are you okay after watching an apparently liberal woman functionally weaponize her whiteness in Central Park? I know that many feel terrible that such atrocities continue to happen. I don’t know whether people understand that, because they are white, they are subject to the same forces that produced Derek Chauvin, the officers in Kentucky, those men in Georgia and Amy Cooper in New York.

Maybe you believe you have nothing in common with those people, that good intentions, tolerant upbringings or enlightened parenting will protect against such corruption. Maybe you believe the diverse activism on display nationwide will make things right. But sincere concern and time have not fixed our problems. They are not enough to protect any of us from the influence of the malignant system we all live in.


<snip>

The question going forward is whether people suppress the desire to deny this problem or distance themselves from it. The forces that created the monsters so many now decry also help to generate white privileges. Talk alone will not dismantle a system that has torn at all Americans — body, mind and soul — since this country’s inception. It’s time to educate friends and family, and demand more of leaders. It is time to be more than a cheerleader or ally and find ways to make permanent change.

This will not be easy. The price of justice — the loss of privilege — will be a painful shock. But the privileges of dominance come at a steep moral and psychological price for whites and cause others significant harm. As Frederick Douglass said, without struggle, there is no progress. Let’s struggle together for our collective soul.

[Hortensis]

1. Some truth, too much false equalization. All the enormous

advances in equality over the past century and a half have been created by good-hearted people who saw them not as sacrificing their own privileges but as sharing them among others. A betterment of all, not a lowering for anyone. Many continued important advances have been achieved proudly by our own generations in the past 30 years.

Those who've always fought this most passionately are dying off in larger numbers than they're being replaced, but those wired to disagree that people are or should be equal and to resist change will always be with us. It's literally genetically wired.

It's always been up to everyone else to outvote them and to refuse to tolerate hurtful behaviors. For those who've not engaged and allowed them to prevail, this does not mean sacrifice of privilege, but taking a firm and constant stand on the principle of equality -- that all should be privileged. In this way, as before, we continue to increase general wellbeing and prosperity for all of us.

"It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America." Molly Ivins

Yup. And it is our own actions -- or lack of them -- that place us on side of that struggle or the other. A sideline to sit it out, unengaged, does not exist.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. +1

Equality is not a zero sum proposition.

[Hortensis]

9. :) +1000. Equality is a synergy that increases wellbeing for all. nt

[onecaliberal]

3. I am NOT okay with any of it. When people don't vote their interests these things are difficult

To eradicate.

[Skittles]

4. just curious how "loss of privilege will be a painful shock"

that reminds me of people saying gay folk want special rights.....they don't, they just want what everyone else already has.

[marble falls]

5. He's speaking on the difference between "privlege" and "rights", rights are privileges extended ...

to everyone.

When I was younger I always had the extension of white privilege. I wasn't aware what it was but I knew I could count on the prejudice of people doing the hiring - I knew I had the edge if was competing with a black candidate. It was a given for me through the 90's.

So yes, when you turn privilege of a class into the right of an equal chance for all, there is a loss of privilege even though the privilege and the right is equal.

[Skittles]

6. when I served in the military, women were not allowed in the academies

I don't remember a huge shock when they were finally allowed in, except from the outright misogynists.

[Hortensis]

7. He seems to imagine he understands white people but this is not understanding.

He's "averaging" all white people together to come up with averaged group reaction. Why he degrades all those who proudly elected Obama into a pool with those who were bitterly opposed I won't speculate. It's just what he's doing.

What I do know, though, is that this is neither truth nor wisdom.

[Skittles]

8. that's a good explanation

for most of us there will be no "painful shock" - it's people like MAGAts who feel threatened by the idea of equality and they are certainly the minority