Always love to see you pop up in my notifications - and as always you make some good points and offer a rebuttal to my articles with your usual grace and insight. I suspect your reply will get many claps.
As always, we agree on some things and disagee on others. Racism is very real and has very real effects in the Western world. You and I only disagree on the methodology of how we make the world a better place - and that methodology is informed by our world view and life experiences.
I don't necessarily have a problem with the anger that you and other writers might bring to your work. Such anger is often justifable and necessary, but I do question it as a tool for continuing discussion past a point. If the end goal is the resolution of racism then we must be careful that anger doesn't result in the drawing of battle lines - or if it does and the US goes into a race war, then we must be certain there are enough white people to even the odds. Given the propensity of white allies to piss off the moderates (read some of the white people comments on this story) you'll see that this might not be the case. Such a thought is terrifying. Anger pushes the centre ground to the right.
The other thing I'd say is that we must be careful about treating a racial group as a homogeny. There are plenty of factors that can intersect with privilege and race is one of them. Your son, and his summa cum laude status (I think that's being top of the class right?) would've got there despite racism but by virtue of other privileges. He likely didn't have a mother who abused him for starters. His mother is an author, and likely an avid reader and bibliophile... certainly the sort of person that could help him with his homework and who believes in the value of a good education. There are white people whose parents are both alcoholics, who engage in constant acts of domestic violence and who wouldn't help their children with homework even if they were paid to do so. Those people are not systemically disadvantaged in the same way that your son is - but they are victims of poverty and poor parenting etc.
Those people can be easily swayed towards racism, they can be easily swayed towards 'other people are stealing things that rightfully belong to you' type thinking. Those people react badly to being told they're privileged beyond all else because they don't feel it. In the same way that you don't feel privilege because you see it predominantly through the lens of race oppression, they don't feel privilege because they see it through the lens of economic oppression. Getting these two groups of people to speak to each other is the only way I think we can lower racism. If we can redistribute wealth more effectively and give people some breathing space through parenting programmes, free school meals, public libraries, public leisure centres and subsidised child care then I think we'd see a drop in active racism very quickly. That's why I argue for the economic model. It wouldn't end racism which I think is psychologically hardwired, but it'd certainly be a start.
You and I will continue to have this back and forth for a long time over many years of writing here - and I think we absolutely should. It's a worthwhile discussion to have and a good discussion for others to read. On the latest quesitonnaire Medium sent out, I asked for them to allow authors to jointly write pieces - because a balance of views is better than one view. As soon as that happens (and I really hope it does) I think we should write something together. I think our respective audiences would benefit from reading the other.
Great to hear from you and keep up with holding me accountable for what I write :o)
