Seeing the truth (tho not finding it much easier to stomach) is just a wee bit easier for white people like myself -- who straddle the line between privileges accorded to whiteness and intersectional deficits accompanying conditions that move us over to the "less privileged" side of whiteness -- physical and mental health disabilities, age, and the inevitable accompanying poverty, and multiple other conditions that my stroke-damaged brain cannot remember at the moment.
I know not all who live on my end of whiteness can see that. I know my graduate education in critical theory (one of myt privileges) gives me greater insight into the specific arrangement of economic/state power that backs up whiteness. Whites without that education are more likely to be trump followers (or, rather, trump's , et al. white "cannon fodder" army).
Unfortunately those conditions took me out of the university world where my goals had always been consciousness raising about various forms of oppression. It took me a while to comprehend how much I myself had unconsciously reinforced those condiitons. But I did get there, eventually.
I have no problem with anyone pointing out how privileged I remain, and I don't ask anyone to catch my white tears nor soothe my white pain. This is written with the audience of my "fellow travellers" (so to speak) in mind, tho it is also meant to give support to the idea that we (white folks) need to step back and practice LISTENING as we never have before.
It is a whole "sea change" once one arrives at that point.
QUOTE:
-> Maybe you’ll realize that this isn’t a new thing, that it isn’t some sort of indoctrination attempt by leftist crazies or whatever you’ve been telling yourself. It’s simply a real thing that we won’t allow to silence us any further. Even if we don’t have the privilege of saying it without being called racist names or being attacked, we’re still doing this because our children deserve better.
So do yours. <-
AMEN.