In this blog:
- The problem with wokeness
- There is no such thing as a white ally
- How white spirituality, religious or not, allows racism to grow
- As Mayor of Minneapolis, I Saw How White Liberals Block Change
Passing along a few items that landed in the Inbox this week.
The Problem with Wokeness
“I think ‘wokeness‘ has robbed many a people of compassion and replaced it with moral superiority,” says Ayishat Akanbi (stylist by profession and writer by survival strategy), in a provocative 5-minute video: The Problem with Wokeness. “Compassion and empathy is imperative in any social movement,” she says. “… What is radical is kindness.”
There is no such thing as a white ally
“Racism is not mine, it’s yours, and it’s not called ‘help’ when it’s your mess we’re cleaning,” writes Catherine Pugh, Esq., an attorney and former Public Defender for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. In her essay: There is no such thing as a white ally, she says her argument is “not about nomenclature, individual contribution, or about anybody’s heart or hard work. “This is about — and only about — the damage behind defining as “help” a thing that is your duty.”
How white spirituality, religious or not, allows racism to grow
Kerry Connelly says white spirituality contributes to systemic racism, in the essay: How white spirituality, religious or not, allows racism to grow. “… if there is one thing that I got out of seminary, and specifically from being exposed to Black liberation and womanist theologies, it is that white spirituality tends not to concern our human bodies. This is not a very useful theology when it comes to actual justice.”
“Too often, talk of actual justice in white spiritual circles is hushed for the sake of unity or good vibrations. In Christian circles, this looks like white niceness, like not being “divisive,” like promoting unity above justice (where unity = silence). This looks like pastors not preaching about racial injustice because they want to avoid controversy, except really they are afraid of losing white tithers.”
As Mayor of Minneapolis, I Saw How White Liberals Block Change
Former Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges wrote in the New York Times: “White liberals, despite believing we are saying and doing the right things, have resisted the systemic changes our cities have needed for decades. We have mostly settled for illusions of change, like testing pilot programs and funding volunteer opportunities.”
“Whether we know it or not, white liberal people in blue cities implicitly ask police officers to politely stand guard in predominantly white parts of town (where the downside of bad policing is usually inconvenience) and to aggressively patrol the parts of town where people of color live — where the consequences of bad policing are fear, violent abuse, mass incarceration and, far too often, death,” according to her Op/Ed piece
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