The other day ... [View all]

[1StrongBlackMan]

DUer, Fourscore, posted an "Open Letter" OP that began:

Dear white racists and your fragile fee-fees:

Relax, I'm white, too. Look, I can do the secret handshake and nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Lemme whitesplain something to you, fellow white men: no one buys your bullshit. That's because your bullshit runs like this: For historically- and presently-oppressed black people to be treated decently, they must carefully avoid doing anything that could be remotely twisted into behaving like a white racist, even if you're squinting and looking at it from five hundred meters away in a thick fog. Because that would be racist, and therefore hypocritical, and if that's the case, they deserve to continue to be oppressed.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5610937

Interestingly, its reception, on this message board populated with self described "liberals" and "progressives", was decidedly mixed ... most read it for what it was - a rant against white privilege and those denying or wishing to pretend it doesn't exist. However, there was a significant number of responses, that while (presumably) accepting of the substance of the piece, were critical of the piece as "ineffective" because of its tone.

(I won't even mention the few that flat out denied the existence of the phenomena or wrote the piece off as masturbatory tedium.)

Then another DUer asked one of those critics to do a re-write of the OP, transforming the content into something more palatable.

That got me to thinking ... what a wonderful idea - for those critical of the piece, here's your chance to tell others how to address the topic of white privilege in a manner that is/will be acceptable to those that, either deny its existence or are offended by the tone of pieces discussing it.