words.
"...The black-inflected online community has offered a nonstop tutorial on the nature of institutional racism and how it has led to tragedies like the Charleston church massacre and the shootings of Trayvon Martin, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Philando Castile and many others. Black Twitter has ridiculed attempts by traditional news media and others to draw a distinction between racism and “unintentional bias.” Those who defend this distinction typically argue that deploying the charge of racism commits harm by alienating people and stopping “the conversation.”
This argument reduces the discussion of structural racism to the equivalent of dinner party chatter, in which one guest challenges the bigoted views of another without spilling the Margaux. But life is no dinner party. And an unarmed black man shot by a police officer is dead whether the officer is openly bigoted or not. The Black Lives Matter movement deserves much of the credit for pushing back against that distinction and advancing a candid way of speaking about racism that is making its way into the national consciousness.
...The bigoted outpouring licensed by the Trump campaign will surely persist — whether or not Mr. Trump wins. This election has made clear that racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and xenophobia still have broad constituencies in America. The first step toward keeping them at bay is to insist on calling them by their rightful names."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Election That Obliterated Euphemisms
SEE ALSO:
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Republicans and the Myth of Election Fraud
No comments:
Post a Comment