I grew up poor and white. While my class oppression has been relatively visible to me, my race privilege has not. In my efforts to uncover how race has shaped my life, I have gained deeper insight by placing race in the center of my analysis and asking how each of my other group locations have socialized me to collude with racism.
If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.
And the basis on which we agreed to operate with them involved a manifesto, where it states that we proceed from different ideologies and policies. One thing that we insisted on was that they should take an oath to reject racism and discrimination.
We must acknowledge that issues like systemic racism, economic inequality, and the achievement gap are the result of manmade policies.
We want to believe racism is an artifact of the past, and if you have a political massacre, that contradicts that.
My generation of Americans was the first to really care about racism and sexism, not to mention the I Ching, plus, of course, the Earth.
My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.
I have visited some places where the differences between black and white are not as profound as they used to be, but I think there is a new form of racism growing in Europe and that is focused on people who are Middle Eastern. I see it.
Like my father, I believe that nonviolence is the antidote to what he called 'the triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism.' These three evils were consuming our hopes for community in 1964, and, fifty years later, we remain divided because of their festering effects.
One of the most important misunderstandings for white people to get over to move forward is this idea that racism is a good-bad proposition - that if we're good we can't be part of it, that being uncomfortable means you're a terrible person. We have to let go of that and understand it as a system we all live in.
I think what I came through is great, but my son can take it to another level, not having to fight racism. His mother's a Norwegian and I'm mixed up four or five times, so he can face the world.
Adults who loved and knew me, on many occasions sat me down and told me that I was black. As you could imagine, this had a profound impact on me and soon became my truth. Every friend I had was black; my girlfriends were black. I was seen as black, treated as black, and endured constant overt racism as a young black teenager.
The NAACP ignores the wellspring of racism from within its own ranks, daring to brand anyone who disagrees with the standard they bear for the plantation-politics Democrats as 'white nationalists.'
Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.
The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the Left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.
When you discuss racism, it's almost a no-win scenario - but I don't think that means we shouldn't be discussing it.
It was definitely during the Obama administration that talking about racism, or calling it out, suddenly seemed taboo. It seemed like talking about race was somehow summoning the evil of racism.
I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.
We live in a world where racism hasn't changed at all. It's that old thing of, you know, the more things change, the more things remain the same.
Anti-black racism operates at a society-wide level and colludes in a seamless web of policies, practices, and beliefs to oppress and disempower black communities.
