DON'T CALL IT RACISM!

From the New Republic:

White St. Louis Has Some Awful Things to Say About Ferguson

"'It's bullshit,' said one woman, who declined to give her name. When I asked her to clarify what, specifically, was bullshit, she said, 'All of it. I don't even know what they're fighting for.'

'It's just a lot of misplaced anger,' said one teenage boy, echoing his parents. He wasn't sure where the anger should be, just that there should be no anger at all, and definitely no stealing.

'Our opinion,' said the talkative one in a group of six women in their sixties sitting outside the Starbucks, 'is the media should just stay out of it because they're riling themselves up even more.'

'The protesters like seeing themselves on TV,' her friend added.

'It's just a small group of people making trouble,' said another.

'The kid wasn't really innocent,' chimed in a woman at the other end of the table (they all declined to give their names). 'He was struggling with the cop, and he's got a rap sheet already, so he's not that innocent.' (While the first point is in dispute, the second isn't: The police have said that Michael Brown had no criminal record.)"

More here.

Let's not call it racism, okay? Because the moment that word is used, the brains inside the heads of the people I'm talking about suddenly lose access to all logical and rational ability. So I won't say "racist." I will, however, say "delusional." A lot of white people in America are COMPLETELY DELUSIONAL when it comes to issues of race and oppression. We will never solve the numerous longstanding problems with race in this country until these white Americans decide to stop living in their fantasies about the way the world works.

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

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