Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Morality & Society Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia

Following is an email I received today. It's an introduction to an article on race. According to a quick Google, the author, Tim Wise, is the Director of the newly-formed Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE) in Nashville, Tennessee. This article is my first introduction to him. The article is traveling through the black community here in the Midwest, and I thought it might be of interest here.

It's a long article; I've read it once, quickly, but I think it's worth another, slower read.

Of National Lies

Thanks for the link. It is indeed powerful, well written, as unemotional as the topic will allow, and well worth the read. As a white American, it never is easy or pleasant to review history in the cold, harsh light of reality. But as one white American who has stood at ground zero in both New York City and Hiroshima, there can be no mistake about which was the greater obscenity against American values as we preach them. We should bow our heads in shame and prayer for forgiveness, not raise our voices in attack on the man who reminds us of the truth of the matter.

Some 3400 black men, women, and children were lynched in this country.
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html

This is compared to fewer than 3,000 people who died on September 11, 2001.

More than 3,000 Americans have died EVERY MONTH in each of the last 14 years on our roads and highways, 560,000 men, women, and children of all races.
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

We killed 100,000 Japanese in two days in 1945.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip29.htm

And we now have sacrificed more than 4,000 Americans in Iraq in search of justice against our enemies, not to mention the more than 80,000 Iraqi civilian casualties in that same period.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

And we have the temerity to lay on Rev. Wright's shoulders the mantle of hate and un-American thought? We have lost all perspective on the meaning of loss.

I haven't heard much from Tim in the past few years, but he has been doing the 'anti-racist' circuit for at least a decade or more. He was big on p + p = r and the whole "whiteness" as a social construct schtick in the 90's.

If he hasn't changed, his message was and is, you are white, all whites are racist, you need to shut-up, sit down, listen to what non-whites (people of color in the popular vernacular of the movement) have to say, then get up, renounce your own 'white privilege' and go out and make it all better.

He wrote something years ago that I may still have a copy of. If so, I will post it for anyone eager to have a one-sided 'discussion' about race.
Yours,
Issodhos

I had no idea it was supposed to be a contest, loganrbt.;-)
Yours,
Issodhos

"I had no idea it was supposed to be a contest"

IF that is truly what you see, then you have my sympathy.

issodhos said:
There's an 'anti-racist' circuit'?

How'd you find out about it?

Do they publish a calendar of events?

Issodhos summarizes thusly:

And Issodhos, you would disagree with all his points, some of his points, just his conclusion, or is it the remedy that you don't like?

Is white privilege something that should be held onto and protected, or don't you believe it exists (or perhaps ever existed)?

The thread was intended to discuss the article itself, rather than the author. Some of the people forwarding the article have no idea who Tim Wise is; all they know is that he's apparently/said to be a white man.

Wise's career may or may not shed light on the article, but unless we look at the article, that won't make much difference.


Julia

I agree with you on that.
The article is well structured and well argued. Its analysis is clear and compelling. Its conclusions are irrefutable.

Which, I imagine, explains why the response was an ad hominem attack on the author.

(I think the attack was poorly made, though, and I tried to point that out.)

The outrage it suggested?

How dare anyone suggest that white people quietly listen to others' complaints and then take appropriate actions to remedy injustice!

The messages are intended for any and all who have stood by with a blind eye or deaf ear to the history of injustices in this country, and indeed any country, which has practiced any form of genocide, segregation and discrimination for fun and profit.
That we are at or near the top of the list doesn't change the message.
That some white folks may have taken part in the national dialogue for many years does not dilute its importance because the message is not for them, but for the former group, which is still out there, in growing numbers in some parts of the country.