TMR® GOOD READ: THE HEART OF RACISM IS DENIAL

 

 Dear Friends,

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/opinion/sunday/heartbeat-of-racism-denial.html

 

Yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Review carried a remarkably insightful essay on the phenomenon of racism and denial, partners in our inability to make headway on the scourge of racism in America. Its author, Ibram X. Kendi is a professor of history at American University and the author of “”Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,’ which won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2016 when Kendi was just 34 years old — the youngest winner in the history of that award.

 

I suspect you’ll find elements of your own perspective somewhere in his piece — I surely did — and in doing so, be encouraged to think about the conflict in broader, less Manichean, and more forgiving terms. We are not responsible for the rhetorical excesses or taunting tweets of this President, nor for the resurgence of nativism that has gained such traction in America during the second decade of the 21st century, but we can think anew about our own proclivities for denial and assessing blame. 

 

Here’s how Kendi puts it early in his piece:

 

Mr. Trump appears to be unifying America — unifying Americans in their denial. The more racist Mr. Trump sounds, the more Trump country denies his racism, and the more his opponents look away from their own racism to brand Trump country as racist. Through it all, America remains a unified country of denial.

The reckoning of Mr. Trump’s racism must become the reckoning of American racism. Because the American creed of denial — “I’m not a racist” — knows no political parties, no ideologies, no colors, no regions.

 

On the occasion of Martin Luther King Day, it seems a good time to be thinking in different terms about this issue that continues to dog American culture and politics.

 

 

 

 

 

RGM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Minnie Warburton]

Thank you so much for bringing this article to our attention. It reminded me of when SNCC (Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee)asked whites to leave SNCC. "Go work in your own neighborhoods," was the message. "Take the message of antiracism to your white families, white friends, white communities," was essentially what was said, and what SURJ (Show Up for Racial Justice) asks of us whites today. The question for me always becomes why is it up to Blacks to bring racism to white attention? As a white person the responsibility to call attention to racism is mine. We say too often "Black actor so and so, Black writer so and so..." How about white actress Meryl Streep recently said... or white writer Garrett Mitchell reported....