African American

Last edited Sun Jul 17, 2016, 11:48 AM - Edit history (2)

Overall, I think you are pretty much right. It all depends on the goals.

Raising consciousness, which needs to happen first, and really, it's sad that it has taken oh, 150 years or so for a lot of white folks to realize that what blacks have been saying about racism might be actually true, but social media and camera video make it pretty much impossible now, thankfully, for any other than the most overt and committed racist to deny the disparate treatment people off color receive at the hands of the police. For that the language and images of the oppressed are indeed powerful.

But changing policy- laws, rules, and regulations- to actually get stuff changed, be it police training and procedures, sentencing guidelines, economic policies,-those 'powers that be' speak a different language and work in a different paradigm, getting the people who control that machine to do the right thing is a different process, I think. As your basic social work support technician and longtime progressive I 'get' where BLM is coming from and why the movement needs to confront the comfortable in the way it does. But moving the folks with actual power, and their constituents (usually those with economic and institutional power, not mere voters or protesters), or even the mass of white folks who aren't really effected by either protests or racial disparaties language that lumps all white folks together is not helpful even if we both can understand why people in rage, pain and danger might be just a wee bit strident and confrontational...

Anyway, my point is that yes, the author is right that there is often a lack of the sense of 'that could have been me' WRT white folks that makes it hard for them to understand why blacks in Oakland might react so strongly to police killings in another city; but that doesn't mean it's productive to address white folks as if they were a monolithic block and indeed the opposite, the author give us a valuable insight into how to possibly make clarification of communication easier and more effective.