Don’t Say ‘White’

I have no idea why, but white people hate it when anyone uses the phrase “white people,” because, for some reason, they consider it a pejorative. When protesting police brutality, education inequality, unfair housing practices or anything else, you must be careful not to “make it all about race”—even if the thing you’re protesting is all about race.

Refer to racism as a “social issue.” Instead of slinging the phrase “white supremacy” around all willy-nilly, you can instead refer to it as “structural inequality.” If your “underprivileged” child has been fenced into a poorly funded educational system, call it an “inner-city school.”

Uttering the words “white people” only serves as a reminder of their historic ties to oppression, which can only be negated by their instinctual regurgitation of the preamble to all white excuses: “Not all white people ...” Even if you make your protest about a “societal issue” that’s not about race, you still shouldn’t expect them to join in or approve.

They already heard you say “white people.”

Liccy Dahl told BBC Radio 4's Today programme her husband had written about a "little black boy".

But Dahl's agent thought the idea a bad one and insisted the character be changed - something Dahl's widow said was a "great pity".

She said seeing the 1964 children's book as her husband had intended it would be "wonderful".

(snip)

"It was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a black hero," said Sturrock. "She said: 'People would ask why.'"

Michelle Jones was released last month after serving more than two decades in an Indiana prison for the murder of her 4-year-old son. The very next day, she arrived at New York University, a promising Ph.D. student in American studies.

In a breathtaking feat of rehabilitation, Jones, now 45, became a published scholar of American history while behind bars, and presented her work by videoconference to historians’ conclaves and the Indiana General Assembly. With no internet access and a prison library that skewed toward romance novels, she led a team of inmates that poured through reams of photocopied documents from the state archives to produce the Indiana Historical Society’s best research project last year. As prisoner No. 970554, Jones also wrote several dance compositions and historical plays, one of which is slated to open at an Indianapolis theater in December.

N.Y.U. was one of several top schools that recruited her for their doctoral programs. She was also among 18 selected from more than 300 applicants to Harvard University’s history program. But in a rare override of a department’s authority to choose its graduate students, Harvard’s top brass overturned Jones’s admission after some professors raised concerns that she downplayed her crime during the application process.

Elizabeth Hinton, one of the Harvard historians who backed Jones, called her “one of the strongest candidates in the country last year, period.” The case “throws into relief,” she added, the question of “how much do we really believe in the possibility of human redemption?”