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Trump's Staff Finally Responds to Portland White Supremacist Murders

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Blind Frog Belly White5/29/2017 4:02:39 pm PDT

re: #107 JordanRules

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My grandniece shared an interesting post on FB today. It was about White Fragility. Interestingly, the post itself is headed with a copy of another FB post, showing the author of the White Fragility post giving a presentation, entitled ‘White People Are Fragile’ and someone white saying ‘Is this acceptable in our high schools these days?’, which is, of course, the perfect demonstration of white fragility.

The biggest takeaway from the lengthy text of the post was that we white people tend to be so fixated on racism being a binary moral failing (You’re Racist, or you’re Not Racist, and if you’re Racist, you’re a BAD PERSON), that we can’t even talk about pervasive systemic racism without feeling under attack. I think this is what Ta-Nehisi Coates meant by white people needing “individual absolution”.

So, we can’t talk about racism without having to deny any racist feelings AT ALL. We can’t talk about black people being treated differently by cops without being accused of calling all cops Racists. We can’t talk about studies showing ‘black associated names’ getting half the rate of callbacks as ‘white associated names’ in applying for jobs without being accused of calling hiring managers Racists.

And if we can’t talk about it, we can’t fix it.