Recent Comments
Re: “Feedback 5/11”
"Let's enjoy being as great as we are, overlook Nathaniel's wrongdoing, which need not touch us, and use our energy to work on more pressing issues."
It's frankly ludicrous to suggest that the legacy of slavery need not touch us. It touches all of us every day - it continues to provide privilege to white people and deny that same privilege to black people. Look at Rochester today - black people left the South for northern industrial centers in the early to mid 1900s to try to escape Jim Crow/the post-emancipation institutionalized racism of the South. This was followed by the flight of white people to the suburbs, and once the economy slowed, veritable ghettos in the northern city neighborhoods. How this happened is a very complex issue that owes much to the less-discussed institutionalized racism in the North.
White people have the privilege to avoid thinking about these issues, or going to economically depressed and racially segregated areas of the city, leading many to believe that it's not a pressing issue. While there may be other reasons not to change a name, it is shameful to pretend that names and symbols lack power. Not opening our eyes and examining these names and symbols is how we perpetuate the legacy of slavery, every day.
Re: “Feedback 5/11”
johnny, pretending that white people don't enjoy privilege is how we deny rights to others. It's how the white male elite maintains their power. Democratic party included.