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comment by mk
mk  ·  3543 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: South Carolina Officer Is Charged With Murder in Fleeing Black Man’s Death

    This is literally not possible until, somehow, minority groups outnumber white people and then impose the same systematic oppression. That'd be hustling backwards.

It's a very good point, and it depresses the hell out of me. White people were eager to embrace Bill Cosby's criticisms of the black community, but sitting in the cultural pole position, they are unwilling to challenge their own community about the perpetuation of a culture that sidelines blacks in spirit and action. If police were murdering unarmed white people with such frequency, the music would stop. Musing about the context of this shooting promotes sidelining, because that context would have almost zero traction in the conversation if the victim were white.

This is a problem that falls on blacks, and white people have the most power to change it. It is the ignorance and cowardice of white people that allows it to perpetuate more than anything else.

The fucked up thing about human nature is the tendency to associate that which we appreciate with extant social mores, and skepticism is an avenue for self-exclusion.

Whether or not minds can be changed, the message needs to be clear in the white community that airing of racists views should rightly end with the racist feeling uncomfortable, rather than those that listen on.