Dear White Folks - great piece in Ebony

[zentrum]

27. I think you miss the point

Even though not All White people are in the "privileged class"--there's still not a single White person who is fully aware of the privilege we enjoy just by being White.

For instance---if we had lost our Bobby or Mary, the morgue would indeed have called us. Had the shooter been Black and the victim, White---he'd not have been believed and would have been investigated immediately; the crime scene would have been secured.

The author is attempting to get you to imagine just a little the very different psychological space you live in---clearly without you even knowing it.

The indifference the cops showed towards the shooting of a young Black man is indeed a racist issue. That indifference rests on a bed of unconscious pre-assumptions that we White people never have to examine. And many of us seem unable to do this examination.

Your point about Black people killing Black people is completely irrelevant. That too is an effect of systemic racism that insures ghettos, poverty, inequality of opportunity, the economics of drugs---and continued police indifference. If White people were killing White people in such numbers, it would be addressed on a national level, taken up as a serious problem to solve. Our country yawns when there's Black on Black violence, or a missing Black child.

Wake up.