To those insisting that we "reach out to" and "understand" Trump supporters, let me break it down

[Tom Rinaldo]

125. There is absolutely no reason why you should have to do either.

To be blunt you are not running for any office and you do not have to thread the needle to find a way of winning the plurality of votes needed to get elected from a non minority majority district, without also selling out in the process. Having said that I absolutely believe that you have already put in more than your share of time trying to reach out to and/or understand bigots. But even putting that aside, victims of oppression have already been victims of oppression. That by itself is more than any person should be forced to deal with.

With the overwhelming majority of bigotry in America directed at People of Color by Whites, it is Whites who have to step forward to confront it. We don't have to twist ourselves into pretzels to understand it, we swim in a river polluted by it every day. We don't have to make special efforts to reach out to bigots even if we want to, we are surrounded by them already in our families, in our jobs, on our streets, on a daily basis.

I can say this about most Whites. We are mostly blind to our prejudices because we don't see/recognize them in their most virulent forms inside of us. We don't consciously believe that Whites are superior than People of Color, most of us don't anyway. Most of us are just as likely to try to free a black child from a car wreck as we are to try to free a white child from the exact same dangerous accident; just as likely to throw a rope to a black woman standing on the roof of their car during a flood as we are to throw that rope to a white woman. Therefor we think we can not possible be racist, and depending on how we all define that term, many of us, probably most of us, are not. But we can still be bigots, we can still be programmed by our prejudices not to see all of the injustice that surrounds us, to take part in it, and yes to benefit from it.

That unfortunately is "your problem" EffieBlack, in that you must cope with the consequences of that reality. But it is not your responsibility to address prejudice with anything other than condemnation. It is the responsibility of the Democratic Party in America to elect enough Democrats who stand against injustice in enough places so that government becomes an ally of the oppressed, not another instrument of that oppression.