White Fragility Digest #14: 1 June 2018

[EffieBlack]

93. I think Ligyron was referring to the day to day big and small oppression that blacks must endure

The examples you mentioned are important and jarring - but they are also very distant from most white Americans. They don't know Trayvon, Tamir or the people who were murdered in Grace Emmanuel and many of them don't know anyone like them at all. They don't have any friends who are treated to the "stare" or followed around stores, stopped for DWB or mistaken for the bellman or waiter or criminal suspect.

So, while many white folk saw and were likely horrified by the situations that you mentioned, they didn't have any impact on their lives or the lives of their families or people they know.

I've been very dismayed by how few white people in today's America have regular contact with people of color. A few weeks ago, I asked people to share when was the last time they had a conversation about race with someone of a different race or socialized with someone of a different race in their homes and was really shocked at the number of white DUers who answered that they never or rarely did. It seems that much of what a lot of folks here know about people of color, they learn from the media or on DU and elsewhere on the internet.

There's a big difference between watching and following a situation like, for example, Dr. Gates being arrested on his own front porch and actually having that and other similar things happen to you over and over and never knowing if it's going to happen again today or having a close friend who experiences these things on an ongoing basis. Not experiencing these things close up and personal doesn't make you a bad person, but it does tend to keep you at a distance and give you less opportunity to really understand, try as you might, exactly how pervasive and damaging these daily occurrences are. And I find that people who do have friends who go through this and, thus give them more than a birds-eye view of these things tend to be less likely to dismiss the concerns of minorities when they come up in places like this.