An architect of critical race theory: ‘We cannot allow all of the lessons from the civil rights movement forward to be packed up a
 

An architect of critical race theory: ‘We cannot allow all of the lessons from the civil rights movement forward to be packed up and put away for storage’

By KK Ottesen
January 19, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EST

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...TJO4.jpg&w=916
Social rights advocate and race theory educator Kimberlé Crenshaw. (Ian Maddox/For The Washington Post)

Kimberlé Crenshaw, 62, is a legal scholar who developed the notions of critical race theory and intersectionality. She is a law professor at UCLA and Columbia, where she is co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. She lives in New York and Los Angeles.

Recently, critical race theory burst onto the national scene in a way that probably is somewhat unrecognizable to those who have studied it. Having coined the term yourself, what has your experience been as you’ve seen it become this sort of intellectual boogeyman?

Well, one of the very first articles I wrote was “Race, Reform and Retrenchment.” The entire point was to anticipate that reform would inevitably reproduce retrenchment and backlash. That has been the history of progress around race in the United States: Modest reform creates tremendous backlash. And sometimes the backlash is more enduring than the reform.

Consider we had about a decade of Reconstruction. And we had about seven decades of white supremacy, racial tyranny, utter and complete exclusion. We had probably a good decade, maybe a decade and a half, of active civil rights reforms. And then three, four decades of conservative retrenchment, reactionary responses to these reforms that allow for people to say what they’re saying now, which is that anti-racism is racist, your civil rights violate my civil rights. These are very old and repetitive ideas. So the reform, retrenchment frame is now taking place in the midst of a tremendous resurgence of anti-democratic, anti-inclusionary politics. And, in the context of a new distribution channel that is 24 hours, amplified by completely unaccountable information sources in the Internet. There used to be that saying that a lie gets around the world three times before truth gets its boots on. I’d say now a lie gets around about a million times before truth wakes up and says, “What is happening?”

You watch definitions of work — and words — that you know what they mean be completely turned inside out by power. I mean, that’s what it is. The power to define what your words mean, the power to define what this area of study is. The power to define it in order to destroy it.

You’ve heard critical race theory called “divisive,” “state-sanctioned racism” — can you define what it is and what it isn’t for the lay person?

Critical race theory is a prism for understanding why decades after the end of segregation, over a century and a half after the end of slavery, after genocide has occurred, why racial inequalities are so enduring. Initially, critical race theory focused on law’s role in creating racial inequalities and continuously facilitating them. We were that second generation after the formal collapse of segregation to go into institutions to see the ways that these institutions — largely created during a time where most marginalized people of color were not part of them — function. What are the ways that those institutional structures continue to protect the interests that were created in slavery and that are its descendants?

The middle class was basically created through federal policy that was then distributed in a discriminatory way because of local control. A hundred and twenty billion dollars created the suburbs and did so in a racially discriminatory way. GI Bill created the middle class in a racially discriminatory way. So these are all critical ways of looking at our society.

What experiences as a young person helped inform your work? I know your parents were [politically] active?

When I was in fourth grade, off I go to this new Christian school — before we knew anything about the politics that motivated some of the Christian academies to come online — and find out that I’m one of two Black people in the school. Also, apparently my presence there is a surprise for some of the parents; we’d assumed they’d know Black people are Christians, too. But that wasn’t the point of the school. So there ensued a three-year confrontation with how Christianity and racism were not practices alien to each other in that school. It didn’t help that I was the kid who won the academic contest and went to represent the school in the region. I would always get a talk: “Remember, you’re representing us.” A lot of anxiety about that. My cheers that I brought to the school, because I was a cheerleader, like, “Um, we can’t do that. That’s a little too …” I know they were basically saying “too Black.” But it really came to a head in a class where one of the teachers read Revelations to apply to the civil right protests that were going on. She was literally teaching that the civil rights movement and then the Black Power movement, that we were in the final days and these Black activists were basically demons. And every day my hand was up: “My brother was one of those people.” And so I’m fighting back, and off to the office I go for intentional disobedience. It was the beginning of understanding how school can discipline us away from confronting the truths about our society and try to weaponize us, to be agents of some of these ridiculous ideas. And I was like, “Ma, you’ve got to get me out of this school.”

How did you have the courage to speak up then?

So my parents, they’re called race men and women of the 20th century. The motto of some of them was “lifting as we climb.” My grandmother was in a Black women’s club movement. My mother had integrated the local lunch counter and the local pool, partly because her father was the town physician for Black folks, so they were able to do some of that without having the backlash — you’d get fired for doing that. So I think that came from her background straight to me. And my father’s father was a minister, also given some degree of independence. So together their understanding was when we sit down at the dinner table, you need to have something to say about what you’ve seen in the world, what have you contributed to the world, what is your thinking. And so they would hear from me my efforts to put together what it meant in the world to be this little Black kid. [Laughs.] And so speaking my mind, at least to the world, was encouraged — they sometimes had a little issue when I said: Well, how come this particular unfairness is happening in the home? But the environment encouraged critical thinking and reflection and instilled a responsibility to address unfairness or address racism where I saw it. It just so happened it was in my classroom.

When you see all those parents out protesting at school board meetings about critical race theory being taught in the classrooms, what do you think?

I think that the Republican right-wing outrage machine is very, very powerful. I see the money behind it. I see the slick, high-production-value videos and booklets, and I see the common language and phrases, and I just know it’s a campaign. A campaign that is nicely framed as grass roots when, in fact, it is not. I see the fingerprints of the think tanks that for some time have been rooting around for something that would catch fire. And I see that parents, some of them, if you just follow some of the organizations — the Moms for Liberty — you see this is a regeneration of activists who have been in various formations. It plays well on TV, and it is a show. It’s like reality TV, which is not necessarily reality.

And I think: Where is the outrage about the things that really are putting children at risk? And there are things that are really putting children at risk, right? It is not critical race theory. And when I look at the list of topics now banned because they’re discriminatory, I can’t help but notice what’s not there: eugenics, “The Bell Curve,” things that if there really, really was concernabout teaching our children ideas that are divisive and that cause us not to share in our common heritage of Americans, it would be a whole different list.

It seems that critical race theory came into the [national] conversation as a backlash to progress made after the killing of George Floyd and a grappling with long-standing, systemic issues.

Absolutely. Think about it: The George Floyd situation was a generational moment. Right? It was huge. Every state in the union had a march. The majority of people out there were not of color. Language was being shared widely for the first time: “systemic racism,” “institutionalized patterns of marginality,” “racial power.” People were saying these words in a way that they hadn’t — ever! Yet, and this is where some of the problem is, it’s like those songs where everybody knows the chorus and they sing the chorus at the top of their lungs. And then [the rest of the song is]: Mmmuuhmm da da da da mmmmmmmerm — that’s kind of the situation we had. With no real literacy beyond that, with no capacity to actually say: Okay, so tell us what that means, what needs to be done. Tell us what the policies are that allow us to unravel the institutionalized forms of inequality that you are now talking about.

And if you don’t have the ability to do it, you’ve picked a fight with a giant, and you don’t have ammunition. You don’t have troops, you don’t have the war plan to respond to it. And you know the reasons why are that this is new for many people. This was produced by a singular moment, and that moment is increasingly looking like it may be singular if we’re not prepared in this moment to actually say: This really is what structural racism is. It’s not this stuff that these other people are talking about.

You saw [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis issued an “anti-woke” act?

Yes. And he actually used Martin Luther King to support the idea. What can be more a statement of racial power than to use a martyr who died for a particular cause, to use his name in order to say that he would support eliminating further discourse about the cause that he died for? I mean, what could be more an example of this sort of boundless capacity for contradiction for hypocrisy? He was a critical race theorist before there was a name for it. So that would be bad enough if they were just using Martin Luther King as a justification, but the fact that some of these folks are also saying we need to take Martin Luther King’s books, or a story of his March on Washington, out of the curriculum even as they’re using it to justify it.

We cannot allow all of the lessons from the civil rights movement forward to be packed up and put away for storage. Because if that happens, anything and everything that speaks of diversity and fairness and inclusion will always be vulnerable to: Well, that’s just critical race theory. And so you have to recognize that the effort to pack all this together is not just about critical race theory. It’s about the entire justice project.

So how do you think about reform in a way that doesn’t cause one step forward, seven steps back?

It’s my constant question. You know, one of the things that I think about — a lot — is if we were to go back and talk to, I don’t know, Frederick Douglass in 1874 or any of the Black congressmen who were elected to serve Congress or any of the senators or the lieutenant governors who were Black or the majority who in South Carolina actually ran their governments there before the great coups that ended that experiment in multiracial democracy — if we were to say, “Look, this is what happened.” [Laughs.] “What now would you do differently? What could have been done differently?” — what would they tell us? Did they have any idea that they would be wiped out of politics altogether? Did they have any idea that some of them would be killed? Did they have any idea that race riots would be political coups? And if they had that idea, what would they have done differently?

We have been kind of raised with the assumption that everything is always forward, with the assumption that democracy is just in our DNA, and certain things are just never going to happen. Moving forward, we have to acknowledge that being vigilant and productive about preventing this kind of thing from happening again is not simply a matter of singing “Kumbaya,” it’s not just a pat on the back, it’s really looking deeply into our institutions and into our culture to understand why these things keep happening.

So when we’re looking at something like this that makes no sense, it should tell us that there’s a deeper logic driving it. And that deeper logic goes all the way back to: We are a country that was grounded in a racial project. For the longest part, we were a White nation, and our laws said so and our Constitution was interpreted to reinforce that. That doesn’t go away just because we stopped saying it.

Is it better in your mind that critical race theory is out there being talked about, even if it’s being misused, rather than existing in its pure state but in a much smaller conversation?

That is the question of the moment, and I think we won’t know the final judgment on this until history writes this story. And that turns on who’s doing the writing. [Laughs.] Which is honestly what’s at stake right now. This is about what the future knows about this moment.

My thought, my hope, is that having put front and center in the American consciousness the importance of what histories we tell will bring constituents, parents, policymakers to the table in a way that they haven’t been in the past. To really understand that to think about race is not the problem. To be racist is the problem. And racism is not primarily a thought crime; it’s an action crime. It’s an institutional problem. So is it better that this has happened? I would say, if it turns out that it makes people who should have been conversant in these ideas realize that there is no democracy without grappling with these issues, that there’s no daylight between maintaining a multiracial democracy and being fully literate on anti-racism. If people recognize now what this has to do with January 6, if they recognize now what this has to do with the deterioration of our democracy, then it will have been a good thing. Because it’s a five-alarm situation.

KK Ottesen is a regular contributor to the WaPo magazine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...fad_story.html

I love that it took some old ass hippies to shake up Spotify.

Boomers, indeed.

:bow:

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said she supported the appointment of a Black woman to the US Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the retiring Associate Justice Stephen Breyer.

"I would welcome the appointment of a Black female to the court," she said. "I believe that diversity benefits the Supreme Court, but the way that the president has handled this nomination has been clumsy at best."



Well Susan at least President Biden is a man of his word UNLIKE you! How many terms have you served??????

Susan Collins won't say whether she'd back Donald Trump in 2024. Why not?



https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/polit...ort/index.html

Yanno, the Senate backed Reagan after he promised to nominate a woman as a Supreme while campaigning. He nominated Sandra Day O'Connor. I think Bush#1 intentionally chose a Black conservative (Justice Thomas) to replace Thurgood Marshall. (I don't have any proof of this, hence the word "think.") I think Clinton chose RBG, in part, because she was a woman and Jewish. Bush#2 nominated Alito, who was not his first choice (Harriet Miers was his first choice), because Alito was more conservative than the person being replaced (O'Connor), but I think he also went with Alito because Alito was Italian and Catholic. Many of these decisions were made, I think, to create a diverse Supreme court. Biden is doing the same.

I have been hoping for the day when we nominate an American Indian as a Supreme (shame on us for never even considering one), but I have no beef with Biden nominating a Black woman. It's a promise he has to keep. Doesn't mean the Senate will make it easy for her, nor is there a guarantee that the person confirmed will be a woman, let alone a Black woman, but his promise was to nominate a Black woman and that's what he's doing.

Deals like the one Biden made with Rep. Clyburn are made all the time, but in secrecy. Biden put it all on the table—personally, I didn't think he had it in him to do this in the open, my bad.

I'm glad Biden is doing this in the daylight. I wish more politicians were open about the promises they make to get into office.

Collins Prepares to Do Silly Moderate Dance All Over Again...
 

Maine Senator Susan Collins has a lot of friends. First elected to the Senate in 1996, she developed a reputation as a reasonable, moderate Republican willing to work across the aisle to get things done. These years of niceties and moderation, culminating in her party-breaching vote to convict Donald Trump in his post-Jan. 6 impeachment trial, have turned Collins into one Democrats’ last remaining hopes for making progress in a deadlocked Congress, and a potential saving grace should the Grand Old Party decided to wholeheartedly embrace Trumpism once again.

Or, that’s the narrative that Susan Collins likes to put forward. In reality, she has proved time and time again to be just as craven as the rest, and only interested in moderation or bipartisanship when it serves her agenda.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...130052122.html

Ted Cruz says it's 'offensive' and an 'insult' that Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.


Ya know what some might consider "offensive"? A Texas Senator who flew to Cancun, Mexico, amid a weather crisis last year around this time!


https://www.yahoo.com/news/ted-cruz-...220438275.html

Oh dear .........
 

Susan Collins Dismayed Supreme Court Justice Misled Her On Abortion.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) expressed disappointment Tuesday with the leaked Supreme Court draft that would overturn abortion rights ― saying that if it’s true, they were misled by certain justices during their confirmation hearings. “If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office,” Collins said in a statement.

Susan was your head so far up your arse that you didn't hear former member of the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens say that Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh was not qualified to sit on the court?

Just to refresh your memory:

Justice Stevens said he came to the conclusion reluctantly, changing his mind about Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination after the second round of the judge’s confirmation hearings last week. Judge Kavanaugh’s statements at those hearings, Justice Stevens said, revealed prejudices that would make it impossible for him to do the court’s work, a point he said had been made by prominent commentators.

“They suggest that he has demonstrated a potential bias involving enough potential litigants before the court that he would not be able to perform his full responsibilities,” Justice Stevens said in remarks to retirees in Boca Raton, Fla. “And I think there is merit in that criticism and that the senators should really pay attention to it.”

Ocasio-Cortez Torches Collins And Murkowski: 'They Don't Get To Play Victim Now'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tore into Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Tuesday after they expressed dismay at the Supreme Court’s leaked draft majority opinion that would overturn landmark abortion rights decisions.

“Murkowski voted for Amy Coney Barrett when Trump himself proclaimed that he was appointing justices specifically to overturn Roe,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “She and Collins betrayed the nation’s reproductive rights when they were singularly capable of stopping the slide. They don’t get to play victim now.”

The senators, who both claim to support abortion rights, provided key support to justices appointed by former President Donald Trump who now appear poised to gut Roe. v. Wade. (Collins voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018; Murkowski voted to confirm Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020).

All of this nonsense is done by rich, religious, immoral, individuals of all ethnic backgrounds, to gain more votes!

There is no longer separation of church and state, like it's supposed to be!

If you aren't rich, religious, immoral and are common man, it's obvious now that no parties in the government give 2 craps about any of us! They are doing this for their own egos and for mid terms.

I am so dismayed with this country and government!

If you've looking to sell that bridge you own......
 

WTF...
 

Matt Gaetz is a model avatar for the Republican Party’s manic culture war. As a far-right reactionary currently under investigation for sex crimes, he checks several boxes of hypocrisy so often seen among the GOP’s moral crusaders. It makes sense, then, that he delivered the best encapsulation of the socially conservative right’s response to pro-choice protests now sweeping the country.

“How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?” Gaetz asked on Twitter on Wednesday morning.

Shaking my head!

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...204017918.html

Priceless response from Steven Colbert....
 

“In response to the nationwide protests, this morning Gaetz tweeted, ‘How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?'”

After reading Gaetz’s gross take, Colbert quipped, “Now folks, if that statement sounds insane, remember, for Matt Gaetz ‘over-educated’ is any woman who’s already graduated high school.”

Gaetz is currently under federal investigation for sex crimes, specifically whether he had sex with a 17-year-old girl for money in 2017 and whether he paid to transport women across state lines for sex. He is also being investigated for obstructing justice, per NBC News.

Former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders speaks at a campaign stop at a Dairy Queen in Little Rock, Ark., Monday, May 2, 2022. Sanders is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in the Arkansas primary.


Can I just say anyone who would vote for this lying sack of shit should have their head examined!

We've got to get something better on him and I'm sure there's a better scoop. Personally, I don't believe a young woman of 17 years is a child. I am not the only woman who started hooking at 15, started working the streets to get out of an emotionally abusive household. Worked until a little over 16 and was able to move to Chicago where I continued as it was the easiest way to make good money. Waiting tables was tedious and not nearly as lucrative.

No regrets. In fact, am active in a group trying to lower the age of consent to 16. Young women of 16 should have all the rights and responsibilities that pertain to adult women. I get disturbed when they call these sex-workers children.

Yes, Matt Gaetz is a Right-wing sleaze bag. There's got to be something else to pin on him...his closet has to be full of skeletons.

She wasn't the only one shocked at the revelation. Consider myself a woman of the world and it shocked me. Who can you believe if a judge is testifying in Congress under oath?! It shook me as I couldn't believe that someone would lie under Congressional Oath. I would think that's the one place a person wouldn't lie. After that, I became very cynical (much more than usual) thinking about who can be believed. Came up with no one, and now I distrust my doctor and even my Partner. I'm sure it will blow over...eventually. I grew up a gullible Hoosier where truth-telling is a societal norm and lies are the exception to the rule!

Scotty, beam me back to that time and place.

Alternative facts Conway.......
 

Kellyanne Conway slams 'shrewd and calculating' Jared Kushner in memoir: 'There was no subject he considered beyond his expertise'.She called Kushner "shrewd and calculating" and criticized his sprawling portfolio.

I doubt I'll be buying her book Here's the Deal: A Memoir

IMHO the one thing that stands out in all these individuals book's written AFTER they left Trump's service, is that they were experts at lying and spin control!

The book doesn't appeal to me either.

The fascists published after being complicit in Tru*p's regime reminds me of Albert Speer's (Hitler's architect) publishing a multitude of works after being convicted for Crimes against Humanity at Nurenberg. He was sentenced to twenty years after the Holocaust.

Orema, perhaps you would answer a question that has been burning in my soul since Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed and have been too embarrassed until now to ask.

Here goes. Justice Thomas is one of the most conservative justices serving on the SCOTUS. How can someone who is of color (any BIPOC) align with conservative right-wingers given what the BIPOC community has endured from slavery or the Indigenous atrocities to the racism and Jim Crow seemingly resurging? I truly don't understand ignoring one's people's history. As a Jew, I have difficulty dealing with anti-Semitic people and choose not to associate with groups who have members of that ilk. As a Socialist, I choose not to deal with any right-wing ideologues. I steer clear of both of the above-mentioned groups feeling very uncomfortable in their presence.

WTF? You'll need to get this lesson from another.

Don't ask me to explain or help you understand shit like this. I'm not here for that.

I'm in pain. I wake up each morning to another horrible story about Black people being tackled, shot at, or killed and the last thing I want to do is explain shit like this.

Sorry for hitting a raw nerve. I understand your pain. The Jewish Community, of which I belong. has had more than its share of pain. Why the "WTF" response, thought I approached the issue with due sensitivity and respect? As Jews, we (the Jewish Community)are also experiencing hate. Jews have been the object of hate since the Middle Ages. When hate is rampant in a community, anti-Semitism is also present. We have been blamed for everything from "blood libel" to current-era pedophilia.

We've had Orthodox school children run over upon exiting school buses and Rabbis killed in their homes while saying Kaddish (mourner's prayers (said daily for a year after family members with a minion of 12), Synagogues shot up killing worshippers, spat on, hit, yelled at, and I'm sure that's not the full extent of it. Who did the Nazis chant about at Charlottesville? It wasn't "you will not replace us." It was "Jews will not replace us!" All less than80 years from the Holocaust where 6,000,000 Jew lost their lives at the hand of Fascists like those white supremacists today who are indeed Fascists.

My community is suffering as is yours. Please do NOT treat me like some "woke" white person as that doesn't apply here.

Sorry, I brought this line of questioning to BFP. Guess I'll go to one of my other sites to ask this and risk rebuff and rejection there. Orema, I actually thought you would not give this response to my carefully and sensitively worded question or I would not have picked that scab.

But you didn't bring your question to BFP, you brought them to me, specifically, and I suspect (and expect) you already know the answer based on your education and experience.

I'm not sure why you were initially embarrassed to ask the question but I would follow that lead when wanting to ask BIPOC or LGBTQ+ people (or almost anyone else) to explain their outliers.

It is not my intention to engage in a personal attack. Thought we had a better online friendship than most of the interactions I have here. All of my personal interactions have been online (except with my partner) for the past several years mostly due to the hate and disgust shown to transgender people and Jews in my area.

These are my personal issues, not a justification but perhaps an explanation for why I asked you. I realize that many people on this site dislike me, not sure why. No one has told me. Yes, I am educated but also obtuse at times. Perhaps, much of this is related to why I chose to ask you.

The embarrassment about asking anyone my question is more related to strained social interactions than the question itself, but again my issue.

White people are never asked to be a spokesperson for white people to explain someone’s violent, bizarre or idiotic behavior or beliefs. Why did that white person do that, white person?

I have no clue why bat shit crazy Ginny Thomas is such a traitor to our country or why she supports a racist white nationalist party when she is married to a black man. I couldn’t tell you and no one expects me as a random white person to have the answers.

Thank you.

cathexis,

Bulldog explained it correctly.

l lashed out at you because of your inappropriate expectation of me and not for any other reasons.

Everything I mentioned (my pain, your education, etc) was not to challenge you in those areas, but to give you context on why I wasn't answering your question.

“Sorry, I brought this line of questioning to BFP. Guess I'll go to one of my other sites to ask this and risk rebuff and rejection there...”

Have fun. Careful with the door.

Perhaps, what Bulldog wrote was something that applied to their situation.

I have been asked to explain the Holocaust to non-Jews because of not looking obviously Semitic.

How white supremacist militias can justify their existence.

Why did Dylann Roof feel so much hate as to go into a black majority church and murder nine little girls and injuring many other adults in South Carolina then wave the Confederate Battle Flag defiantly.

Additionally, why neo-Nazis wanted to march in predominately Jewish Skokie and why a Jewish ACLU attorney chose to defend them using the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

I answered these questions without negative attitudes towards the querent.

Orema, my reason for asking you was to gather your insight into why he might think and behave in that manner. The basis was intellectual curiosity.

Thank you for coming back with a response that was less emotion and more reason. I often miss the information when mixed with anger. My issue and not related to anything amiss from you.

Perhaps?

I’m stunned that you refuse to accept my reason and still feel entitled to an answer from me.

I will leave you to yourself.

What an arrogant, ignorant response. Yes what I described absolutely applies to you and you’ve proven it with every comment you make. You are engaged in typical white person behavior and not listening to anything Orema is saying to you and taking it personally and making it all about you and feeling entitled. Typical white person behavior. Ugh.

As a mixed person of other ethnic backgrounds, mainly Native American, I can not answer that question, as part of the white Eurpoean background either.

I can only speak for how I was raised and by whom I was raised, my personal experiences as well.

A white person has no say in a POC's personal experiences, even if the Jews, Native Americans, etc have all had bad experiences.

A POC can not speak for a white person

A Latino/a, Hispanic, Mexican, El Salvadorian, etc cant speak for white people

my whole point is, one race can NOT speak for another on certain personal bad experiences.

You've got no idea about my background or what qualifications I have. Your behavior shows how little you know about people and their psychology. Your response disgusts me.

The response undoubtedly stems from online dialogues had in the past that included people not currently active on BFP. Ones in which Anya, you, and I engaged in contentious banter about earlier political elections. Ones that proved your political assertions incorrect.

Your attempts to belittle me are inconsistent with intelligent online discourse.

I’m not going by your background or behavior. I’m going by the actual words you have typed on the screen. If you want to continue to wallow in your white privilege and huge sense of entitlement and not learn anything that’s your choice.

I certainly remember Anya but don’t remember any past political conversations with you. What I have said in the past about the political state of affairs has been proven correct not incorrect.

Instead of looking at your own behavior and maybe trying to understand why what you did was inappropriate by listening to what Orema was saying to you - instead you type out this crap.

Just.....I know this is the red zone but this has become alot lately.

Too much divide, shakes my head...resorting to name calling or hashing up old stuff. Saying someone is ignorant, is the same as name calling, telling someone about white priveledge without checking your own, is gross..calling someone out on other things, when asked another person, whether, POC,BIPOC, Native American, Mixed, etc about their feelings, and arguing is nonsense.

Sorry for typos I'm just in awe and disgust.

I am in the middle of moving so don’t have time for this complete nonsense but thanks for the good laugh. If you truly were serious about wanting everyone to get along you obviously would not have responded to me the way you did. In addition to white privilege being “checked” it can also be used to speak out and to support people of color when possible. That is what I am doing. The disrespect and lack of support by some of you is appalling.

I was speaking in general, if I wanted to say something directly to you, I would quote you, I didn't so it was in general, for everyone!

So you assuming, makes you a you know what!

So my posts are general talk, if I want to say something directly to anyone, I will quote yall! Let's get it straight.

Everything you mentioned was from my posts. Either way my post still stands. I consider the matter with both you and cathexis closed. I don’t have time for the nonsense.

Going back through the dialogue to share with my partner, I feel it necessary for me to make a follow-up. It is not that I continued to insist on a different answer. I accepted the one you gave.

Reading through the whole argument, I was reacting to the anger. Felt like I was jumped rather than given an answer on your first response. Tell me instead of coming out with teeth and claws if you feel like a question is inappropriate. I don't understand why this whole political argument couldn't have been civil, which applies to everyone involved.

I received an answer to my original question elsewhere. We have an ongoing discussion on the topic, so I will bow out of this dialogue.

It's seems as though you really cannot understand what it was you did that was so triggering and so you continue to double and triple down on it. It is very alarming. It feels like it's just something that you can't see, like the air that you breathe for example. And there is nothing that has happened thus far in these interactions that would give me hope that it will become clear to you if it is just explained once more. But for reasons that are unclear to me, I still believe, despite years of evidence to the contrary garnered during many discussion about many issues in which I have failed miserably to explain successfully to another person reasons for which they should change their point of view on a particular subject, that perhaps this time it will be different. So I am compelled to try.

The issue is very simple. One should not ask a person to explain why others who are the same race, religion, gender or whatever do the things they do. Nobody should be made to feel responsible for explaining the actions of others of their group. Why would a person of color have a better answer for you regarding the behavior and choices of other POC? And more importantly why would it be their job to explain it to you? A white person is not expected to answer for all white people. Perhaps that is a good rule of thumb ... before you ask a person to answer for others, think about if you would seek out the only white person in the room and ask them to explain, oh, I don't know, for example maybe, why some white people cannot recognize their white privilege. Or why some white people confuse white privilege with other issues for which the white person might be oppressed. For example, you can be a privileged white person and be socio-economically oppressed. Apples and oranges. And understanding your white privilege does not negate your disadvantages in other areas. So it is always best not to try and compare them.

Also, white privilege is something that you cannot refuse as a white person. It is given to you and it is not earned and cannot be declined, all youcan do is recognize it and drag it out into the light at all opportunities. That and not ask a person of color to explain the motivations of other persons of color. Your posts thus far have given the impression that you don't agree and feel there is no harm in asking a person of color to explain the actions of another person of color as though they are all the same and understand each other's motivations perfectly and/or want to expend the energy to explain it to a white person. Also you seem to understand and allow for your response to what you perceive as anger or attacks, but can't seem to be capable of imagining how it makes Orema feel when you ask her questions like that. How it might bring up all kinds of crap for her. And how frustrating it might be to always have to be prepared for the unfeeling and insensitive interactions that can trigger all sorts of unsolicited, unwelcome and complicated emotions.

As a jew living in an increasingly fascist, right-wing state, sometimes I worry I'll eventually end up in a cattle car. Still, I'm white. I can walk through a department store without being followed by security, and I can take a drive in my car without worrying much about being pulled over and murdered by police. I get really irritated when white jews (and yeah, I know some jews don't claim to be white, and some aren't white, but most jews are white passing) compare their experiences to what POC go through.

You asked Orema to provide you with emotional labor and education, and POC are exhausted by that. Racial trauma is real.

Your response was lousy with white fragility. I hope you can work on that instead of being so defensive. The best that most white people can hope to be are "recovering racists" and it's a lifetime of work.

No more, no f*cking more, it's over and done. Perhaps as a person with Aspberger's, I fail in my communication skills. Neither of you seems to have read through the entire dialogue, and I think you read the Cliff Notes version. Believe that I have made an apology to Orema.

Genuinely sorry I even checked back to read any response. Yes, I acknowledge my white privilege. Next time, I will not engage a POC in a discussion regarding their opinion of ANY other person's action online here and not anywhere in person even as others ask me to explain people's actions. This pushes me further into the cave of my mind. I had been making strides in outside communication.

Thanks all for jumping me swiftly during progress so to make the retreat a bit easier.