I was fortunate to have parents who not just professors, though suffering a divorce, still served as a connection to treating all people as human, interacting on a personal philosophical level toward all and talking about the race riots like the one they lived through as young parents in Philadelphia in the early sixties. My mother accepts everyone as a peace activist, not in theory but in practice, and just picked up a black woman she saw walking in the suburbs outside Buffalo. SHe’s in her late 80’s but just stopped to see if she could give this young black woman a ride. As it turns out, the young woman was an African immigrant with a younger sister she was trying to take care of while attending school in America. My mother gave her a ride then twice a week to and from school, and had ear over for dinner a few times. It’s pretty much an almost all white suburb, but she still wasn’t worried about anything from this young woman at all. It was a kindness that served as an example. She’s still a Quaker who believes in peace and equality, similar to the Quakers who found Pennsylvania and were abolitionists. It is people like her that help me see beyond “race” toward the common humanity we all share.
I wish I could say that most whites were like here, but I can’t. It’s not that most are vicious or openly racist, it’s that most don’t do enough. Like the editors at the Florida Sentinel apologizing for racist reporting 100 years ago. If they were truly sorry and wanted to apologize and right the wrongs, hey would advocate openly for reparations and against current voter repression laws in Florida. That though is the kind o apology that perhaps is just going too far for them.
Stay well and thanks again for your insights.