I wrote a piece the other day after arguing with one of my white liberal friends. He's one of the "good" ones. An ally. But the problem as I see it, is the depth of pain that is felt by the oppressed is not the same as even those who empathize and want things to change. His memory of how we "all" voted for Obama -- "White people put Obama in the White House" is in sheer contrast to what actually happened. White men and White women still favorably and predominately voted for the Republican in BOTH elections with McCain and Romney. But euphoria in "doing the right thing" clouded his memory or understanding of the polls. White men - in the majority never supported Obama. The correlation I'm trying to make here may seem faint and my words may not be making much sense, but the truth is, because it doesn't effect people to their core, it ultimately does not matter so much to create actual change. Corporations like Target use it as a way to connect to the feel good moment and profit off of it, all the while never really caring at all about what matters. DEI to them was not about making real change it was about making real profit. I think it's the same with people individually. Not that everyone is out to make a buck on George Floyd's murder or that somehow people intentionally mean to NOT really care to make real change or hold corporations and their loved ones accountable, but because for White folk, it's not their day-to-day existence. It does NOT actually affect them, so marching, voting, is enough. One and done. I don't know what the answer is. But even with my light-skin privilege, I walk daily in my liberal neighborhood of Santa Monica, CA with my license in hand, scanning always for cops in my area and always aware that yet another person may feel comfortable enough to call me once again the "N-Word" because I just happen to exist. That kind of inner fear is something I cannot actually put into words. But I also know, that until White folk understand how bad this will be - IS - for them, nothing is going to change. Nothing. It reminds me of the Cheney's really. I know, I know, this comment is all over the place, but bare with me -- they were against Gay marriage and Gay everything, till it actually affected them. And I think, George Floyd's murder, as horrible as it was for White folk too -- it's never happened TO THEM. They don't know someone in their family who has been taken by police into custody, or watched a Black man handcuffed in front of them for merely asking a question. I don't know how to fix all this, but I cry more and more every day...as I watch, in horror, my country die.
Keep preaching Prof. Claude. Of all the many Black voices speaking out again and again, your is the most urgently needed. Thank God Nicolle Wallace gives you a place to speak your truth.
And now Trump is importing white South Africa citizens claiming discrimination. 🤯 , keep up your educational work. Our country needs it, now more than ever.
Thank you, Professor Glaude, for sharing your deeply informed and passionate voice. It gives me hope. I’m a high school history teacher, and the events of this era - in historical context - are dispiriting to say the least. Your thoughts and passion make me want to keep going when a part of me wants to give up. Thank you!
Thank you for helping us continue to face what must be changed. In the spirit of this reality: 'Black Lives Matter did not fail. The country failed. Again.' -- I humbly suggest we all keep raising our awareness when making statements like: matters of race, questions of race, debates about race, grappling with race, especially 'because of their race'. No. The problem is not race (didn't anthropologists confirm it is only a social construct?). The problem is racism. 🙏 Or as Baldwin would say, whiteness -- right now, talking like that might get us shipped off to a gulag, but let's keep trying. Thank you, Dr. Glaude.
I know where I fit statistically. 11% counts as slow progress. Great movements, like the Women’s Movement, takes a couple of hundred years. We’re gonna get there. Slavery then Jim Crow and persistent economic oppression won’t stop the progress of people who think that racism is abhorrent and will end. There is no acceptance, there is no giving up. Some people justify their castes based on religion, too. Religions need to evolve, too.
And they’re outraged when Black people cheer and dance when the biggest slave plantation in the South burns to the ground. Because “we need to preserve history.” But not the truth about our history, we can’t have that. Just endlessly demoralizing.
As long as you continue to normalize the “white” race as real, and as long as they continue to delusionally identify as a race that does not exist without the ideology of white supremacy, nothing will change.
You have to confront the illusion of race head on to begin with. Stop letting people hide behind these blatant lies!
As a white child growing up in a suburb of Detroit, 1940's to 1960's, my first understanding of the evils of racism arose on reading as a grade schooler a book set in apartheid South Africa that I borrowed from our local library. Then seeing the terrible events of rabid whites resisting school integration contrasted with the peaceful resistance with sit ins and marches and later angry burnings of cities, all made me sadly and keenly aware that all was not well America.
Also, when listening to Malcom X speaking at a lunch break lecture on Wayne's campus, I understood his frustration and his thought that the only hope for his race was to totally remove themselves from the oppression of white society which had been "so carefully taught" to denigrate Negroes. This denigration has expanded in present day MAGA America to include anyone slightly brown, non Christian, economically strapped, or sexually other. Tolerance has always been "trumped" by scapegoating in order to provide a sense of superiority that is blatantly false.
My children went to integrates public schools while mine weren't integrated until tenth grade when an Army doctor's family arrived. WSU was, of course, integrated and had many students from India and Pakistan and professors from Europe. So later as I meritoriously selected players for my U-74 boys soccer team and enlisted the help of a male "other" co-coach, it became an opportunity for the players and their families to positively interact with "others" that hopefully provided lessons of our shared humanity that transcends race, religion, and culture. We must change if we are to survive, yet Baldwin understood its illusiveness and there seems to be a lack of much needed better angels in MAGA world and our inhumane administration.
I wrote a piece the other day after arguing with one of my white liberal friends. He's one of the "good" ones. An ally. But the problem as I see it, is the depth of pain that is felt by the oppressed is not the same as even those who empathize and want things to change. His memory of how we "all" voted for Obama -- "White people put Obama in the White House" is in sheer contrast to what actually happened. White men and White women still favorably and predominately voted for the Republican in BOTH elections with McCain and Romney. But euphoria in "doing the right thing" clouded his memory or understanding of the polls. White men - in the majority never supported Obama. The correlation I'm trying to make here may seem faint and my words may not be making much sense, but the truth is, because it doesn't effect people to their core, it ultimately does not matter so much to create actual change. Corporations like Target use it as a way to connect to the feel good moment and profit off of it, all the while never really caring at all about what matters. DEI to them was not about making real change it was about making real profit. I think it's the same with people individually. Not that everyone is out to make a buck on George Floyd's murder or that somehow people intentionally mean to NOT really care to make real change or hold corporations and their loved ones accountable, but because for White folk, it's not their day-to-day existence. It does NOT actually affect them, so marching, voting, is enough. One and done. I don't know what the answer is. But even with my light-skin privilege, I walk daily in my liberal neighborhood of Santa Monica, CA with my license in hand, scanning always for cops in my area and always aware that yet another person may feel comfortable enough to call me once again the "N-Word" because I just happen to exist. That kind of inner fear is something I cannot actually put into words. But I also know, that until White folk understand how bad this will be - IS - for them, nothing is going to change. Nothing. It reminds me of the Cheney's really. I know, I know, this comment is all over the place, but bare with me -- they were against Gay marriage and Gay everything, till it actually affected them. And I think, George Floyd's murder, as horrible as it was for White folk too -- it's never happened TO THEM. They don't know someone in their family who has been taken by police into custody, or watched a Black man handcuffed in front of them for merely asking a question. I don't know how to fix all this, but I cry more and more every day...as I watch, in horror, my country die.
Keep preaching Prof. Claude. Of all the many Black voices speaking out again and again, your is the most urgently needed. Thank God Nicolle Wallace gives you a place to speak your truth.
And now Trump is importing white South Africa citizens claiming discrimination. 🤯 , keep up your educational work. Our country needs it, now more than ever.
Thank you, Professor Glaude, for sharing your deeply informed and passionate voice. It gives me hope. I’m a high school history teacher, and the events of this era - in historical context - are dispiriting to say the least. Your thoughts and passion make me want to keep going when a part of me wants to give up. Thank you!
Thank you for helping us continue to face what must be changed. In the spirit of this reality: 'Black Lives Matter did not fail. The country failed. Again.' -- I humbly suggest we all keep raising our awareness when making statements like: matters of race, questions of race, debates about race, grappling with race, especially 'because of their race'. No. The problem is not race (didn't anthropologists confirm it is only a social construct?). The problem is racism. 🙏 Or as Baldwin would say, whiteness -- right now, talking like that might get us shipped off to a gulag, but let's keep trying. Thank you, Dr. Glaude.
The more things change. . .
I know where I fit statistically. 11% counts as slow progress. Great movements, like the Women’s Movement, takes a couple of hundred years. We’re gonna get there. Slavery then Jim Crow and persistent economic oppression won’t stop the progress of people who think that racism is abhorrent and will end. There is no acceptance, there is no giving up. Some people justify their castes based on religion, too. Religions need to evolve, too.
And they’re outraged when Black people cheer and dance when the biggest slave plantation in the South burns to the ground. Because “we need to preserve history.” But not the truth about our history, we can’t have that. Just endlessly demoralizing.
As long as you continue to normalize the “white” race as real, and as long as they continue to delusionally identify as a race that does not exist without the ideology of white supremacy, nothing will change.
You have to confront the illusion of race head on to begin with. Stop letting people hide behind these blatant lies!
As a white child growing up in a suburb of Detroit, 1940's to 1960's, my first understanding of the evils of racism arose on reading as a grade schooler a book set in apartheid South Africa that I borrowed from our local library. Then seeing the terrible events of rabid whites resisting school integration contrasted with the peaceful resistance with sit ins and marches and later angry burnings of cities, all made me sadly and keenly aware that all was not well America.
Also, when listening to Malcom X speaking at a lunch break lecture on Wayne's campus, I understood his frustration and his thought that the only hope for his race was to totally remove themselves from the oppression of white society which had been "so carefully taught" to denigrate Negroes. This denigration has expanded in present day MAGA America to include anyone slightly brown, non Christian, economically strapped, or sexually other. Tolerance has always been "trumped" by scapegoating in order to provide a sense of superiority that is blatantly false.
My children went to integrates public schools while mine weren't integrated until tenth grade when an Army doctor's family arrived. WSU was, of course, integrated and had many students from India and Pakistan and professors from Europe. So later as I meritoriously selected players for my U-74 boys soccer team and enlisted the help of a male "other" co-coach, it became an opportunity for the players and their families to positively interact with "others" that hopefully provided lessons of our shared humanity that transcends race, religion, and culture. We must change if we are to survive, yet Baldwin understood its illusiveness and there seems to be a lack of much needed better angels in MAGA world and our inhumane administration.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10232125729915555&set=a.10213291496631494&type=3
looks like i will have to check out BBC Newshour then...looking forward to it :)