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An Open Letter to a Liberal White Privileged Male from a Northern Liberal White Privileged Male
The American Ancestry Display of Liberal Systemic Racism-Lite
I started a reaction to a note on Medium with a bit of biting sarcasm, that I’m not used to doing, to sort of illustrate a point. Personal open attacks on others are not part of a value system I try to wield and strong reason I write on Medium. In this case, since the writer, who appears to be a white male of privilege (well, he admits he is, which is helpful for the discussion), addressed his letter to another Medium writer by name, I think I could respond by showing how calling and targeting someone feels, even if you have good intentions.
I don’t believe that offending critics will lead to much real debate, but I believed that this privileged white male was on the ‘good side’ of the argument and trying to at least make a point and engage a black Southern male writer who he believed might listen in part. I recognized our commonalities because I believed they were significant and found myself “guilty” recently of making the same mistake he did. But I also recognized how that “mistake” actually displays the systemic part of systemic racism “nicely.”
That might be an ironic word, hence the quote marks, but “nicely” I think in this context is revealing because it shows that…
