Bad News Re Race Relations

For John, BLUF:  I am not sure we, as America as a whole, understand what the Black Community feels about race problems.  What we don't need is another Commission Report.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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What ‘woke’ whites get wrong about blacks’ priorities

From The New York Post, by Mr Charles Love, 28 June 2020.

Here is the lede plus one:

This month’s protests started out as a black movement against police brutality, but they have a different look now.  In many cases, whites have taken over.  They apologize for their “white privilege” and, in at least one case, wash black people’s feet to expiate their collective sins.

Celebrities, athletes and corporate America followed suit.  Portland’s police chief resigned, asking to be replaced by a black man, and the CEO of Chick-fil-A urged whites to shine the shoes of black people to show a “sense of shame.”  But why now?

To find out, I had to hear what whites were saying.  I listened to the protesters, talked with my white friends and read articles and social media posts.  What I found was white people overwhelmingly depicting black people as desperate and defeated, with no way to pull themselves out of their misery.

“I understand your point,” a white friend said when I objected to this simplistic narrative.  “But don’t you think blacks are being oppressed?”

That’s when I realized that white wokeness is the new factor in our national life.  It has been embedded into the consciousness of whites that all blacks are the same and that they all face impossible barriers to improvement — from standardized tests to the black men being arrested on the nightly news.  A growing number of whites believe that black life is unrelentingly grim.

Most whites don’t have many black friends to give them firsthand accounts of what their experiences are with racism.  While most blacks do experience some discrimination or ­racial prejudice, it is rarely violent, and it doesn’t hold them back in a significant sense?

Here is a Black man, quietly making the case that woke Caucasian progressive elites have hihacked the protests following in the wake of the killing of Mr George Floyd.  Yes, we need more listening.

I am convinced that one of the thing we will need will be cultural change in our institutions, so that the winking and nodding at racist actions will no longer be accepted.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff