a moment of clarity.

an ongoing discussion.

words. 

 "...As a white man, I don’t have an opinion on whether respectability politics are valuable in a pragmatic sense; I wouldn’t presume to tell black Americans what they should or shouldn’t do in their attempts to survive and/or bring centuries of oppression to an end. Obviously, I think that the need for respectability politics is nonsense; a fellow human is worthy of respect no matter what the color of their skin, or how low they wear their pants. It’s not black Americans who need to adapt to white standards; it’s whites who need to stop killing black Americans for failing to conform to those standards.

Which brings me to the point I do want to discuss, as a white man: what white people can do about this. Being white in a state that is underpinned by 400 years of the exploitation of people who don’t look like you for the benefit of people who do look like you brings its own… discomforts, obviously, at least if you’re inclined to basic human decency and thus to questioning the existence of the apparatus that enables your comfort and prosperity. Equally, the challenge of changing anything can seem overwhelming — as Coates’ essay makes all too clear, the prison industrial complex is so deeply woven into the fabric of the American economy (sometimes in the most unexpected ways) that dismantling it seems a hopeless task.

But paralysis is its own form of privilege; you can choose to absent yourself from the struggle because it all seems too hard. Black Americans don’t have the luxury of making that choice. The struggle can come and take them at any time..."

FLAVORWIRE: If Black Lives Matter, Respectability Politics Should Be a Thing of the Past