Required reading

I think this article on playing the "race card", by Tim Wise, should be required reading for all Americans - if not, as I commented there, all humans (originally posted here, containing the reference material).

It's kind of long, especially for someone like me with a ridiculously short attention span, but he makes points that people simply need to hear.

You know, I wasn't going to shorthand it, but it's really long. I do desperately urge you to read the whole thing, but it does require a little time which you may not have right away. Basically it's a brilliant demolition of white America's attempts to write off any black American complaint of racism as "playing the race card". I was already aware in a general sense of how deeply race affects pretty much everything in America, but the statistics and situations he quotes are still pretty horrifying.

I know people do this, but I'm not sure why; perhaps it makes us uncomfortable to think we might have a hand in another person's suffering, but it's easier to dismiss or minimize their experiences rather than roll up our sleeves and work on stopping it.

When I was reading it I was reminded of a conversation I was involved in back in high school, where a (self-described) Australian-born Chinese girl asked our reasonably racially diverse (albeit all-girl) group to raise their hands if they had experienced racism directed towards them. Out of a group of about 20 or 30 girls*, every single non-Caucasian girl raised her hand.

Up until that moment, being a whitey myself and having been raised in a racially- but not politically-diverse environment, I had thought of racism as the province of history or the occasional old person. That moment stuck with me and was the beginning of my eyes being opened.

I will not apologize** for trying to open other people's eyes in the same way here on my blog, a space I consider my own. I can't force you to read the link, or to take away from it what I did, but it is my sincere hope that you do.


*I can't remember exact numbers. It was a long time ago, okay?!
**As sometimes bloggers feel they ought to when stating strong opinions. Why is that?