White America's Greatest Delusion: "They Do Not Know It and They Do Not Want to Know It."

[carolinayellowdog]

16. "White America" is oblivious all right, but there is a continuum on the willful aspect

Every place I've lived in my adult life has had a white population in the 50-75% range, with high levels of black elected officials. Around here, to be oblivious to the long history of racial oppression requires a great deal of willful blindness. But there are vast stretches of the country where whites constitute 98-100% of the population, and yet their attitudes can be just as horribly racist as any redneck around here. I'm inclined to cut them a little more slack than the local racists, because maybe they're not so much willfully ignorant as JUST PLAIN ignorant. I just heard an interview with the third grade teacher who conducted the blue eyes vs. brown eyes experiment back in the 1960s that resulted in a followup documentary film. The town in Iowa where this occurred was 100% white at the time. Those kids are now in their 50s and say that the experiment caused a life-changing shift of perspective. But there are thousands of other all-white towns that never had a Jane Elliott teaching the blue eyes and brown eyes what it is like to be part of a despised minority.