Letters to the Editor
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@ susan sunflower
Beautiful, trenchant and productive. Thank you.
The fact that even utterance of the word "racism" or "racist" hits raw nerves and forces people into defensive postures is a major impediment to even being able to talk about race.
People don't want to talk about race because they fear being indicted, condemned and ostracized as "racists." Thus, the conversation inevitably turns from a dispassionate, clinical analysis of the way racial and racist dynamics work in experience to impassioned protestations: "I'm not a racist, Clinton's not a racist, Obama's the real racist," etc., ad nauseum.
I guess (for white people, anyway) the underlying dynamic is what used to be called "white guilt."
The problem with the notion of guilt or innocence is that it's too final, to static.
For many people it seems as if a concession of, "Wow, yeah, I guess I was replicating patterns of racism there, my bad." is tantamount to a confession that one has hung niggers from the trees or at least, attended the barbecue celebrating said hanging.
I don't know how to overcome this dynamic, personally, other than to continue to steadily and patiently explain that racism is about more than whether one is or is not a racist.
It's about so, so much more.
Anyway, thanks for a terrific post and thanks for sharing your experience with us.