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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWill white folks PLEASE STOP whitesplaining the experience of being black in America to black people
As a white woman I don't worry about my white son walking out the front door each day. Society affords us advantages in so many ways. I just saw a conversation on the view (in a waiting room didn't watch voluntarily) with the Fergeson police chief at the time Michael brown was killed and it made my head want to explode. White people need to stop telling black people what their god damn experience is in this country. Props to whoopi for not choking the asshole. Lord knows I wanted to.
MineralMan
(146,189 posts)I actually had the opportunity to have an extended candid conversation with a young African American man several years ago. Mostly I asked him questions and he told me stories.
This guy looked like he stepped off the cover of GQ. He was extremely handsome and poised. Even so, the discrimination he faced on an almost daily basis was shocking.
I mean... I don't want to sound naive but I thought we were further along. We are not. Racism is the cancer that will kill this country. Trump just metastasized it.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,145 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)of his restaurant with a gun and pick handle, hearing some candidate for Governor who spitted out the words "N_____s and J__s," and being startled at the book and movie Black Like Me, I did not have much direct experience with discrimination/hatred in my early teens. But with those experiences, I sure understood something wasn't right.
As shocking as those were, they were nowhere near the stories of the victims of that time I heard later. Even in 2017 similar crud could hardly be called isolated.
I did luck up in my first year of college to have a Sociology prof come in one Saturday morning with his head bandaged up from being hit with a police baton at a local demonstration on Civil Rights. He walked in, said put away your books, because we are going to talk about what is going on for the rest of the quarter. I was very lucky, a lot of the Southern kids I grew up with weren't so lucky or didn't care.
My 50th year reunion is coming up in a few weeks. I'm not going, because I've had enough disagreements on Facebook, etc., with some of those A-holes that I know I will punch someone.
Great post OneC.
onecaliberal
(32,471 posts)Couldn't stomach those people. Thanks for the comment.
IronLionZion
(45,250 posts)so he knows the experience of being a minority in America.
I thanked him for his service and told him he has no idea that he's part of the problem since he thinks soldiers in a foreign country are like Americans living in our own country.
and for those who think instant public execution without trial can't happen to them:
onecaliberal
(32,471 posts)IronLionZion
(45,250 posts)higher priorities, or something...