Who First Showed Us That Black Lives Matter?

When do we get real? Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Medicine, Industry, advanced political thought; where did they all come from, eh?

What the founding fathers showed us is that black lives matter three-fifths as much as white lives. Nothing has changed.

This is the weirdest headline. It suggests that before x, black lives didn't matter.

Malcolm X!

"[The Black Lives Matter movement] is a demand for whites to extend their historical imagination . . " Yes, "historical imagination" is a core need if we white Americans intend to grapple with the effects of racism. It can take a lifetime to accumulate enough little nudges, from black friends and acquaintences, reading, the sudden seer of injustice in a news story, or a comment or action playing out right in front of you. My dad, born around WWI, was a great guy, and probably less racist than most. But even as late as 1990, he couldn't figure out why blacks weren't doing better economically. After all, he worked like crazy and had succeeded, so why couldn't everybody? I tried to explain some of the aspects of institutional racism to him, but at that point I was just barely becoming alive to its power myself. I so wish he had lived to see Bob Herbert's 2017 PBS documentary, "Against All Odds: Chasing the Dream." Hearing about Herbert's father, vainly trying to grow his NJ upholstery business, would have opened his eyes, businessman to businessman. Works like this, and Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," can help us exercise that historical imagination we so need. And a little humility and openess to change wouldn't hurt either.

Ah, the subtleties of racism. The comments are so distressing. I am a white, older man who recognizes my privilege. My grandparents were immigrants, who worked their way into the middle class - because of privilege. My parents were educated in schools black children couldn't attend - because of privilege. They bought a first home for $7,500 at a time when black folks couldn't get a mortgage - because of privilege. We lived in a neighborhood with "good" schools - because of privilege. They inherited a bit of capital - because of privilege. I never went hungry - because of privilege. I have never been stopped and frisked - because of privilege. No one has ever questioned my intelligence - because of privilege. I got credit and was able to buy a house even when barely out of school - because of privilege. The definition of "white" is our ability to exclude those who are not white enough - because of privilege. We hold a wildly disproportionate share of seats of power in business and politics - because of privilege. As a white young man, I avoided jail when I did things young black men were locked up for - because of privilege. I was advantaged in job searches - because of privilege. When you inherit all of these advantages, whatever your station in life, you have benefitted from white privilege. And the irony is, admitting it doesn't require surrendering it. I am deeply disappointed by white Americans' inability to acknowledge our complicity in inequity.

Sadly even though the civil war ended slavery, it didn't end the systemic racism towards black people. The legacy is that black people are defensive because they've had to be on guard while white people are ignorant of the long term consequences of being judged first by your color and then by who you are as a person. We will never move forward until we have an honest conversation about how our past history and the 3/5 compromise set us up for our ongoing inability to end racism in our country. There are parts of the country where racial slurs make up casual conversation. There are parts of the country where people are still taught to fear the angry black man. There are parts of the country where steps are taken to disenfranchise black voters by making it difficult for them to vote. How do you feel a part of your country when this type of behavior is allowed. Thank you for offering perspective. Black lives matter makes people uncomfortable but the movement didn't start without cause. At the very least people are starting to have conversations about racism and that's a good thing.

Emmett Till was a victim of a systematic racism which was the reality of that day. Michael Brown was not a victim of extrajudicial murder by police, but he was a person selected to represent such a victim before any facts were confirmed to bring into the mass media a concern that systematic racism was continuing to use the law to oppress African American people. The facts proved that Michael Brown was a huge older teen who was out of control and a threat to the lone officer who was involved, that eyewitnesses reported what they thought they had observed but which were just not accurate according to forensic evidence as well as some corroborating eyewitness accounts which contradicted others. That does not mean that race is not a big factor in the high crime statistics. But then when systematic racism is considered, it's not because of Jim Crow institutions nor laws, nor control of the system by racist whites as it once was, these factors were long ago removed. So what explains it? That is the question that is not being answered. Why are racially diverse institutions still producing proportionally high counts of African Americans being prosecuted, incarcerated, and shot? Why are African Americans more likely to be stopped by police looking for criminals? It exists but it's no longer because of Jim Crow nor white citizen councils, those are long gone. The people involved in arresting, prosecuting and even shooting are often also African American.

I'm no philosopher but my first idea that black lives matter was when I was a little white girl in the 60s and saw on the news film of black people being attacked with clubs and firehoses because they wanted to fulfill the ideal of democracy by voting. We had to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in school and so the ideal of "liberty and justice for all" was put fresh into my mind at the start of every school day. I felt very mad that American ideals were not being honored in the South. Those black people mattered because this is America, and democracy and freedom are supposed to be for everyone. I didn't know anything about black thought or philosophy. I just knew that the Pledge of Allegiance I said in school every day with great commitment was not being honored by those white grownups in the South.

The author asserts that Black Lives Matter began with the case of Treyvon Martin. And if so, that is unfortunate. We do not really know what happened in that incident, but our best assessment, based on available evidence and the trial proceedings, is that Martin was shot while he was kneeling astride Zimmerman, striking his head onto the concrete surface upon which Zimmerman was lying. There are so many reliable accounts of brutal behavior by police toward innocent young black men that it is a shame to establish a movement on the dubious basis of this case.

The Black Lives Matter movement is driven by the reality that since the 17th century a false belief in racial superiority and inferiority to justify the oppression of one group of people by another has cruelly limited the ability of people whose ancestors came from Africa to be treated equally and with respect in the North American colonies of Britain and the United States of America. The anger and resentment expressed is entirely justified. However, it's not a movement that has any intention to overcome the harm done which continues to affect people's lives. It's too focused upon the past to do so. It cannot address the causes of problems for which legal remedies which have already been applied. There are no institutions designed to oppress people according to race, anymore. The racist effects that persists are no longer existing to support white supremacy. The racism resides in ignorant attitudes and a long time slow growth economy which has left most people with circumstances little better than when Jim Crow exited. It's a much tougher problem to address now than in 1965.

"It is a demand for whites to extend their historical imagination and recognize that the ills of racism are not the result of a few bad police officers or a few out-and-out racists in some far-off corner of America." BLM has a problem with some observed contradictions, like the one above. Yes, there is deep institutionalized racism in the US, some of the most obvious examples being in Democratic strongholds where one finds neighborhoods of concentrated multi-generational poverty, violence, and residential and educational segregation going back many decades. Still, the statement above doesn’t seem to acknowledge that the claims of racism among police departments doesn't account for the fact that a number of the police departments are in cities that may have black mayors and city staff, black police chiefs, and a sizable percentage of black police officers. Are they racists? Perhaps the largest contradiction is the amount of violence between blacks, who are responsible for many thousands of more deaths than police officers. The high levels of violent crime have a long history, and are in part on of the reasons for 'white flight' that left so many areas deeply segregated. A movement may have problems with messaging if there are people in the movement who conduct themselves poorly, as we have seen with BLM. The Left had such problems in the 60s and 70s, and a lot of people had problems with sympathy for the Civil Rights movements when cities burned.

Thank you for a lovely piece of writing.

Astringent and meaningful. Thank you ::: The humanist tradition of DuBois, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King is overwhelming ... and applies to EVERYONE. This country needs BLM as much as BLM needs the USA.

Slavery happened. In the context of its introduction to the Americas, it was not an unusual fate for vanquished peoples. No matter the "normalcy" of slavery at that point, it was and is immoral, an affront to the dignity of man. Jim Crow happened. In the context of its time it was immoral and an affront to the dignity of all men, women and children. Its tolerance by our governments was an abdication of enlightened leadership and a crime akin to pedophile priests. The Civil Rights Era happened. Thurgood Marshall accomplished more for Americans than any other single person since the 13th Amendment. The momentum of his efforts combined with the moral strength of MLK and the NAACP changed de jure American race relations. The post Civil Rights era happened. Daniel Patrick Moynahan was right. So too was Jesse Jackson in his comment about walking at night. People forget who actually assaulted 81 year old Rosa Parks. Boston anti-busing riots established working class white pushback against making their kids part of a social studies experiment. The Crack and Gang Banger Era happened. Family breakdown and cultural dysfunction in the AA urban society. Despite the integration of metro police departments and the election of AAs to city leadership, the AA urban core society has begun to deconstruct. Which brings us to today. Until African American intellectual leaders embrace the self inflicted wounds of AA upon their community, whites will not really listen to them.

The human historical antecedents who laid the foundation for so-called "Black thought," along with the appropriate ones from the Western canon, now need to be put in the service of saving the planet--everybody's most pressing problem. The end result of "White thought" is the destruction of all life on earth, carried out with the same zeal as the destruction of Black lives. If Black thought is to be taken seriously, it must encompass ideas that radically transform the existing lunatic and barbaric economic order in recognition of the fact that demanding infinite growth on a finite planet ultimately makes no sense whatsoever.

The prevalence of racism even among educated New York Times readers is simply astounding. People bring up the murder rate in Chicago as if it's somehow a point that diminishes activism, as if that's not part of the very racism being discussed. Black Lives Matter tactics, are you kidding me? Is that referring to the rhetoric that gets repeated on Fox News and is totally false? Athletes protesting racist police brutality are so unbearable to us that we have twist ourselves into mental pretzels and call them unpatriotic to justify our complicity in the system? I wonder how much logic would have to be inserted into the conversation for people to grasp the reality of our institutionalized and systemic racism. We need to be just a little bit curious about the experiences of others. Watch the video from Emma Cott and Andrew Michael Ellis on the NYT homepage today to see what happens when we turn inwards and believe that inside our brain is the only reality.

I've read many essays like this one. Invariably, the author attempts to tie the plight of blacks today with the horror of America's original sin. But they also fail to appreciate that slavery ended 150 years ago ... and Jim Crow ended 50 years ago. But is black suffering linked to these past harms ? If this is the case, why have other groups experienced similar tragedies - but have since recovered ? My own family escaped the pogroms in Russia. Both my grandfathers came to America at 14 years old with little more than the clothes on their back. But their children (my parents) graduated college and immersed themselves within American life. Friends of ours grew up in war-torn Southeast Asia where women were forced to be prostitutes for the Japanese. The easy answer is that these people weren't black and were therefore spared racism. But look at immigrants from Nigeria who actually obtain college degrees at a far higher rate than native born blacks (and whites). This isn't about race; it's about a dysfunctional black culture here in the US. Black sociologist, Thomas Shelby of Harvard "accepts the idea that “suboptimal cultural traits” are the major impediment for many African-Americans seeking to escape poverty. He notes that “some in ghetto communities are believed to devalue traditional coparenting and to eschew mainstream styles of childrearing.” 72% of black children are born to single mothers. Yes, Black Lives Matter. Tell that to blacks.

According to a study published last year by the Pew Research Center, in 1970 there were 80,000 people living in the U.S. who were born in Africa. By 2015 that number had jumped to 2.1 million. I’m curious how Chris Lebron would characterize – or better yet, explain – why these Africans willingly immigrated to a country boasting “the worst social, economic, and political treatment ever visited on a population, for nearly four centuries, and with no end in sight.”

Black Lives should matter when rogue police officers shoot and kill UNARMED black people for no justified reason, and black lives should matter when poor black people are shooting and killing poor black people in Chicago, etc. for no justified reason. I agree with BLM that rogue police officers should face accountability, but their message died on November 8, 2016 after the shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, the American South. People associate those shootings with BLM, and they have not squashed some of the radical elements of their movement. As for Colin Kaepernick and the NFL, I like their kneeling during the national anthem. They are speaking out and giving a voice to issues that should be addressed. As for race, America will always be racially divided, and both political parties love it. Especially the Democratic Party, whipping up minority voters, and the Republican Party, whipping up white suburban voters. America will always be racially divided-it's the way it is and no social engineering, victimhood and throwing more federal and state money to problems will change anything. It's the people. Do the people want to change? Too bad, so sad. Oh well.

I, for one, as a Black man would love to starting seeing and reading some of the more nuanced views that I hear every day among fellow Blacks and rarely see it. We all don't think alike or come from a victim consciousness. Just what has Blacks Lives Matter outsmarted???

I hesitate to oversimplify it, but follow the money. Yes -- "the worst social, economic, and political treatment ever visited on a population" is the key. It is an evil manipulation to maintain power through dividing the wonderful "democratic kin or family"-- divide and conquer. The intent has nothing to do with democracy but everything to do with scapegoating as a power play. People of color (now including Muslims), indeed, have been and are still the readiest targets, and it still works so well when playing upon the emotions (not reason) of whites. This society thrives on conflict driven by selfish greed like never before, with Donald Trump as the poster boy for its methods.

I read somewhere that sexism is the ideology that justifies male supremacy and misogyny is the practice of punishing the women who resist/threaten male supremacy and reward those women who support it. I think it's also to create a terror of resisting. I think there is a corollary with racism. Racism is the ideology that justifies white supremacy. I'm not sure what term captures all of the instances of racial injustice, though the New Jim Crow is as good as any. It's to keep black people terrorized and subservient.

Who First Showed Us That Black Lives Matter? The phrase "All men are created equal" from the Declaration of Independence, which famously set the bar of implicit aspiration far higher than actual practice in ways that would percolate across the next two centuries and counting all over the world, was a ticking time bomb and a promissory note of far greater explosive force and material value than its drafter must have conceived. And let's not forget the Wedgwood Slave Medallion of the latter 18th century, fashionable then and immortal ever since, with its heartbreaking image of a slave in chains on his knees, pleading "AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?"

This thoughtful article heartens me and saddens me, especially when I read the comments from the readers. Black Lives Matter, is a concern because so many black people are being shot by officers who would not dream of shooting a white person in the same circumstance. A young boy carrying a saxophone should not die, because he did not drop it on the ground A man stopped for a minor moving violation should not be shot six time in the back, when the officer had his car and his address. If there were not so many more I would say, maybe two instances would be too few for a movement. However, I know if it was young son on his way early in the morning and he was shot carrying a deadly saxophone, I would want the officer charged. Of course I am white and there is "white privilege" . I an not pulled over, unless the officer thinks I am good looking, I am not followed around a store, because what white lady shoplifts? I am offered jobs that are not menial, etc. Stop denying the facts this country will look at a mixed couple with prejudice, we need to learn to love and leave judgement to God

I will continue to fight racism and support people of color in their struggles despite black orators such as Mr. Lebron. Indeed, black leadership is one of the current causes of a revival of racism and the election of a racist to president. This author, like so many tiresome others, is writing for a black audience only. He wants whites to feel only shame, and that is the last way to create change in society. Of course there is going to be a reaction. Mr. Lebron ignores the progress against racism in the United States. He cites not a single white person who has been helpful (this is a historical travesty). He falsely implies that racism is the special problem of the United States. I am a world traveler. Along with northern Europe and Canada, the United States is one of the least racist countries in the world. Latin America, including Brazil, Russia, all of Asia, Muslim lands, and Africa (with its enduring tribal rages) are vastly more racist than the United States. Black leaders are afraid to build real bridges to whites because they fear their peers in the black leadership. The result is Trump. I will still vote for justice and do my best to act affirmatively because I know that blacks have been truly mistreated worldwide. You can't stop me. But I will do so in spite of most black leaders, who are personally quite comfortable in part because of white support. Isn't it a lie to tell only part of the truth?

How could you overlook Nella Larsen?

Engaging. I enjoyed the walk in the black thought history garden. Some names added to the list of must reads. This line right here gives me life : "While forgiveness and acceptance were hallmarks of King’s and Baldwin’s views, so was an unyielding commitment to self-respect and the demand for social change to institutionalize the idea that blacks were co-creators of the American kingdom."

It's effectively impossible to quantify the author's assertion that "Today, our nation is about as racially fraught as it ever has been." It is hard to reconcile against a US century defined by legalized slavery and the decimation of Native Americans who traced their origins in the Americas as far back as 20,000 years. It's difficult to deny that those were profoundly "racially fraught" times. The author is correct that "our racially lopsided incarceration rates have led the scholar Michelle Alexander to dub our period the New Jim Crow." However, it's vital to note that Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" was published nearly a decade ago, and its entire thesis is that the criminal justice system deliberately perpetuated racism starting in the Nixon administration of 1969, and gained real strength in 1982 when the Reagan administration began an escalation of the War on Drugs. The author intimates that this form of racism is something suddenly current; it's actually something which has existed for about 50 years. Further, "police-perpetrated extrajudicial killings" are not new; heightened awareness of them is. It's now easy to document what in the past was known to exist, but nearly impossible to confirm. The one truly distinguishing feature of our day is that we have a racist president. He does not merely identify white supremacists as "fine people," he identifies with them, while showing utter contempt for most other Americans.

Excellent, thoughtful, beautifully written piece!

This piece, along with Ta-Nahisi Coates's "Between the World and Me," should be required reading for all U.S. citizens as we make our way through Black History Month and come up to Valentine's Day. Let's celebrate love in a new, more enlightened and mature American way, considering what it means to be Black (or white) in the U.S. today and what we owe our Black neighbors.

With a PhD from MIT in pol sci I tread carefully correcting Dr LeBron, but I am moved to try. Specifically; this thesis point is untrue: "Today, our nation is about as racially fraught as it ever has been." Perhaps "You had to be there" applies here, because I am old and he is young, but I can assure Dr LeBron that while racial anxiety in America today ("racially fraught") is very much in the fore, it is by no means higher, or greater, or stronger, or deeper, or more serious, or deadly, or influential, than in years past even in my lifetime (I'm about 60). I don't think it's a necessary part of the essay that LeBron introduce his false metric, and in fact I see the inaccuracy weakening his article by virtue of it's hyperbolic nature. Race anxiety is big news today, but it used to be big reality. That's a plus, not a negative, it is how things are worked out. When I was a boy, well-intentioned ethical & moral white people did not discriminate, but we still understood ourselves to be superior, and not only to Black people, to all people. We were quietly proud to be kind, fair, accepting, and somehow, just better. The details of the psychology are not the point perhaps it was defensive ignorance, the point is; we don't feel that way anymore, we know better. And I can tell you, as much as it's an embarrassment to admit that past, it's a relief to know it is not the case today.

You don't have to be personally racist ("Hey, I have a black friend!") to benefit from institutional racism. Try this over a few weeks to get a good sample size: go someplace and do something at the same time as your black friend, like walking through a store and fingering the merchandise, or sitting at a fast-food-place table with your feet on a nearby chair, or asking a police officer for directions, or driving an old car in a wealthy neighborhood, or a new car in any non-black neighborhood. And see what happens.

Well, for about 24 hours the country felt united and proud, thanks to a riveting contest in a stadium in MN, but I can see it's getting back to normal now. Sad.

"It is necessary that we to see our society today as continuous with that history and not anomalous to it." I wonder how many American citizens can explain the purpose of the Three-Fifths Compromise in shaping of the trajectory of race relations in our country? Perhaps part of the problem is that the teaching of history is not as important as it once was.

The Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S., black philosophy in general? Most of it seems to me an exercise in myth making, not far removed from anthropologists accounts of cargo cults decades ago (read up on cargo cults). Blacks appear to have a paradigm of "white privilege", that white accomplishments have had little to do with ingenuity and hard work but rather some sort of combination of fortune, blessing from the Gods (as cargo cults would postulate), and evil behavior (oppression), and that blacks have found themselves mired in misfortune because of the color of their skin, bad fortune (out of favor with the Gods), and oppression. Essentially a narrative perfect for a far right black nationalism, that the other, whites, are "privileged, evil and at fault for the suffering of black lives". Meanwhile in all places on earth where there is preponderance of blacks, from Haiti to Africa, and where the charge of racism leveled at whites is harder every day to defend, culture remains mired in poverty, socio-economic not to mention political backwardness. And the "privileged" whites today routinely speak of not only surpassing themselves, but having themselves outperformed by machines, Artificial Intelligence, that something they made with their own hands will far surpass their own current abilities. You cannot imagine a starker contrast between views. Blacks had better take responsibility and fix their own cultures. Whites had better watch machines made with own hands.

Would be interesting to hear his take on the murder rate in Baltimore or Chicago. But that never gets talked about.

To MDS: Did your mother also teach you that if a policeman stopped you while you were driving that you should keep your hands on the steering wheel, in site at all times, make no sudden moves, and speak softly and respectfully because otherwise the police officer was likely to shoot you? Did she tell you never to wear a hoodie into a convenience store? Do you really believe that there's no difference between black and white? Have you ever discussed this with a person of color? Did she warm you about the pervasive discrimination that Irish Americans suffered? .. a 5th generation Irish American

Beautiful article. I particularly liked the way Lebron weaves the historical threads of black thought together. From recent events it is clear that racism goes deeper and is far more harmful than most of us ever suspected. I grew up with anti-semites and racists. I made different friends in highschool, and moved across Canada to Montreal in my twenties. I always thought that kind of talk and attitude was finished with. Boy was I wrong.

I am a white person who grew up in SoCal. As a child I attended school with white, black, Asian and Mexican children. It was normal. I attended an all white (the result of economic segregation) middle school. In 8th grade I walked in to homeroom on the first day and saw a black youth sitting alone by the window. I instinctively walked over and sat beside him and said hello. Not replying, he sat and stared ahead. Somehow I understood and kept quiet. Looking back, I remember racist comments that my mother and others would utter unthinkingly but I never connected them to actual other people. It was the language of white people in '40s and '50s Hollywood films. Recently I read John Dos Passos' wonderful novel USA published in 1930 and was shocked at the racist slurs and epithets in the book. But as Dos Passos relentlessly traveled the country, that was the language that he heard. Was he merely reporting? Don't know. I was annoyed that the n word was removed from Tom Sawyer because for me, that would be a "teachable moment" for students. These days, slurs and epithets have been converted into a frightening and dangerous reality. At this point I still cannot fathom the depth of African American culture, something that my black psychologist made me realize, because I asked her to, through outlining some egregious recent personal events that she recounted. The most I can do now is speak out & continue to study and practice love wherever I am.

The idea of race, racism and self identity being defined by philosophical thoughts in academia reminds me of how far science is ahead of this practice. I state this because the recent interest in DNA genealogy is having an individual and collective impact on ideas of kinship, identity, and the deconstruction of mass illegitimate social experiment that has defined race based on seeing rather than factual insight. There isn’t 100 degrees of seperation within the illegitimate race construct. There isn’t even 6 degrees of delegation. The knowledge of kinship based on DNA will do more to rattle and delegitimatize those clinging to Whiteness or Blackness than any philosophical discussion about social and political relationships based on what the eyes see and all the constructs created based on only what the eyes see. Increasingly that not even hypocritical evangelicals and their trumped up gods’ philosophies on race will not hold back the tied of human curiosity, discovery and the facts laid bare and indisputable about human identities, families, kinship and beginnings.

The author writes that "our nation is about as racially fraught as it ever has been." But then rather than offering a nuanced explanation of why that is, he points the finger at the non-black majority. He then espouses Black Lives Matter, whose tactics have done much to alienate would-be allies; and intersectionality, whose focus on identity politics perpetuates an us vs. them mentality. This outlook is largely deaf to outside concerns, and as long as it remains an acceptable way of navigating the complexities of race relations, national solidarity will suffer.

Interesting essay providing a historical perspective, but I don't see her point. I have not heard any rational or reasonable person argue that Black Lives Do NOT Matter. While her last paragraph refers to black thought's primary contribution as a "vision" on how we might save democracy, she does not explain or even suggest what that vision might be. I don't believe I am racist or overly prejudiced, but I am frustrated in that I don't know what is expected of me in the effort to "save our democracy."

The author writes that "our nation is about as racially fraught as it ever has been." But then rather than offering a nuanced explanation of why that is, he points the finger at the non-black majority. He then espouses Black Lives Matter, whose tactics have done much to alienate would-be allies; and intersectionality, whose focus on identity politics perpetuates an us vs. them mentality. This outlook is largely deaf to outside concerns, and as long as it remains an acceptable way of navigating the complexities of race relations, national solidarity will suffer.

There is an aspect of racism that I just don't fully understand. I am Caucasian of southern European ancestry. I will not categorically say that there are no vestiges of racism in my character; no white person raised in the United States (or in many European and other countries for that matter) can legitimately assert that. I do try hard not to be racist. One thing that seems to be at the base of many people's racism is fear of dark skinned people. A relative of mine is six feet six inches and weighs in excess of three hundred pounds and is physically quite active and I have found that he is literally afraid of black males, who in any logical universe would have every reason to fear him. It makes no sense at all but the fact that I can ask him things has taught me a lot of things about bigotry. I have listened to a lot of other people and I've become convinced that at the core of racism is a widespread purely irrational fear of blacks. I grew up in a mixed neighborhood in Brooklyn and so never had this fear, but I've been astonished time and again at the reactions of otherwise rational individuals to such things as taking an ordinary walk through Harlem in the 1970's. There is something in this fear that needs to be understood.

This is a thoughtful essay. While I am familiar with the arguments and the artists and writers and activists names, it is helpful to put them in context. Since I would be classified as "white", I am judged by some activists as automatically white supremacist. Yes, I have been privileged, but was taught from my birth to respect all humans and their cultures and backgrounds. I have deliberately, as did my parents, lived in communities and been active in groups that promoted these ideals. That I have sometimes fallen short, is true of all of us and important to acknowledge. But, in the end, I believe that shared power is the goal and consideration of other differences, like class, is important in understanding prejudice and discrimination. One thing that is not mentioned in this essay, is the prejudice by some people of color, based on what I believe is the misreading of the Bible, against gays and lesbians. We now know that homosexuallity is biological, not a matter of choice. In addition, most humans are mixtures anyway, due to migration and other factors.

My parents taught me from birth in 1947 that there was no difference between black and white. My mother was an officer in the Navy and her best friend was a black Wave. I am a second generation Irish American, born in Norfolk to New Yorkers.