![]() That could mean organizing for change, protesting in the streets, looking into diversity and inclusivity at your workplace, or educating peers who do happen to benefit from racial privilege. Educate yourselves, educate the community Oakland, study and put out statements on the effects of systemic racism in the community. We need a period of reckoning with our past and our present. I call on individuals and our leaders to act. We can no longer be ostriches with our blissfully ignorant heads in the sand about this issue because even if the ostriches feel safe and oblivious under the sand, they are suffocating, too. But if we want to end racism and live in an equal society right now, we can work to alter the flow … it will simply require those with privilege to step up and join the movement. The racism we see today is part of the cycle of history, and we are stuck in the normal flow right now where it will take many more years before we can put a stop to police brutality and racism. History has its eyes on us, and if we truly wish for an equal society, we need to do our duty now to end racism. Those of us who don’t experience the reality of racism can simply ignore it. We can remain neutral and allow racism to persist. What we want to do with this hierarchy is the real question facing America today. We have a racial hierarchy in America in which White Americans are at the top: White people can be White supremacists and hardly get punished, have the privilege to walk outside and not get shot by police because of racial profiling, and more. Who is cleaning the streets, what are the identities of most homeless individuals, who is most affected by brutal policing, who is most likely to be a maid rather than a surgeon? The police shooting of Oscar Grant is a famous example. Here in Oakland, this racial hierarchy exists everywhere. Do we want to choose the side of continuing racism? Do we want to choose neutrality? Or do we want to pick the side of ending racism and the racial hierarchy of White supremacy? Our country can no longer linger in the middle on these issues. These statistics can be viewed from two very different perspectives. Black youth are up to 11 times more likely to be ushered into the school-to-prison pipeline than White youth. Black people are 3.5 times more likely to be stopped and killed by police than White people. Black Americans are 13% of the population in the United States but 40% of all homeless people. Still others view these facts as pure evil. However, being neutral is the same as being on the side of the oppressor. Others are simply neutral about the killings, disparities and inequalities it’s easy to block out these realities for those they don’t personally effect. Some Americans view redlining as necessary to maintain racial order. Some Americans view the disparate COVID-19 rates along racial lines as inevitable considering racial differences. You are 0 in that equation.Some Americans view the police killings of Black men and boys as acceptable as part of a history of oppression. It's like +1, 0, -1 and not +1, -1 in the equation of injustice. If that's your choice, then that's okay, I just disagree with your assessment. The neutral seem to allow the world to wash over them. Slavery was perpetuated less by evil racists than by good-hearted neutral white-Americans.Įvery significant freedom that we have today was given to us by those who decided to fight for it, and oppose the injustice, again, in however small of a way that may be. Nazi Germany was created by a handful of Nazis but a large amount of neutral Germans. Dictatorships are built on the apathetic backs of people like yourself, who are typically the majority. It is allowing the oppressor to continue to oppress. History will support this fact, I believe. The problem is, that of those 3 choices, 2 of them will undoubtedly allow said injustice to grow and continue. You have proudly chosen the third option. Support the Injustice, rebel against it, or do nothing as a neutral observer. You are right, there are not two choices, there are essentially three. It's less "I have chosen the side of the oppressor" and more "I have chosen to allow this oppression in the world to continue". ![]()
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