Analysis: It's time to give some bigots a break - CNN - 0 views
-
What if this ritual of going after people like the weatherman actually reinforces racism and other "isms" instead of combating them?
-
What if this hyper-focus on an individual's wrong distracts us from directing our outrage at the most destructive forms of intolerance -- the kind that's baked so much into our everyday lives that we hardly notice them?
-
"We make these kind of superficial scapegoats that we can use to make ourselves feel better about racism, but we don't address policies, practices or structures," she says. "To the white people who are clutching their pearls, I really have to ask: How integrated is your life? Yeah, you voted for Obama twice, but do you have any black friends?"
- ...7 more annotations...
-
"If you're Latino, you'll get less pain medication than a white patient. If you're an elderly woman, you'll receive fewer life-saving interventions than an elderly man. If you're a man being evaluated for a job as a lab manager, you will be given more mentorship, judged as more capable, and offered a higher starting salary than if you were a woman. If you are an obese child, your teacher is more likely to assume you're less intelligent than if you were slim."
-
The experience didn't just humble me, it scared me. If I -- someone who is black and has read about race and bias for years -- could act like this, what was possible for others who never thought much about these issues?
-
Perhaps there's another way. Our language and behavior should evolve. We shouldn't talk about racism, for example, as an either/or proposition: Use a slur and you're the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK; if you've never used one you're free of intolerance.
-
Here's a little secret that I think many minorities can identify with. Sure, we get angry when people get caught saying or doing the wrong thing. But we get angrier when others claim they could never be like those people.
-
One of my best friends is a fellow bigot -- a white minister I've known for years. He freely admits he still struggles with the racism he absorbed growing up in the segregated South.
-
We should never retreat from calling out the unapologetic cruelty that we see flashed across social media.