Hilarious, "White People Whitesplain Whitesplaining"

[Kind of Blue]

29. Makes sense but studies also found that these bastions of liberalism

are often cities that rank the highest in income inequality, segregation and arrests

'I think that white progressive liberal folks outside of the South almost always got politicized and radicalized around issues other than race,' Wise says. Tim Wise, "one of the nation’s most prominent anti-racist essayists, educators, activists." 'So, if I’m a west coast, midwest, or northeast white liberal, I might be really progressive on the issues that I got politicized around which might have been the ecology, war, schools, health care, or LGBT issues. For most white folks, that’s their entry into progressive politics and race is oftentimes so far down the list of things that they get radicalized around that even for really well-intended people, it’s just a huge blind spot.'

These struggles that progressive cities face around race issues are the reason you see black folks leaving in large numbers for the last 20 years or so moving back to larger Southern cities. Gentrification has forced many blacks out of these cities — many of them have been left isolated, leaving them culturally, economically, and socially vulnerable.

'I’m not quite sure what it will take to get good white liberal folks really animated behind racial issues there,' Wise says. 'The good news is that we are beginning to see nationwide some white involvement because of Black Lives Matter and the police violence issues. There are possible entry points and we are seeing a few white people make it out of their comfort zones and talk about these issues that maybe they wouldn’t have a couple years ago.'"

Love this last paragraph

'It isn’t that white folks have to agree with everything black people do. Rather, it is this: until we show ourselves to be folks who are down for the eradication of white supremacy as a primary concern (and not something we’ll get to later, after we address the corporate oligarchy or climate change or Wall Street criminality), then we cannot expect to be taken seriously by those whose ability to put matters of racial justice on the back burner is constrained by this thing we call breathing."


http://madison365.com/index.php/2015/09/03/what-no-one-wants-to-talk-about-race-and-progressive-cities/