White people need first to acknowledge our racism and then make a commitment to unlearning our racism. "Understanding racism as a system of advantage that structurally benefits Whites and disadvantages people of color on the basis of group membership threatens not only beliefs about society but also beliefs about one's own life accomplishments.... People usually think of racism as the prejudiced behaviors of individuals rather than as an institutionalized system of advantage benefiting Whites." Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria (Basic Books, 1997, Beverly Daniel Tatum)
Men need first to acknowledge sexism in themselves and them make a commitment to stopping it, unlearning it. Women have also internalized this oppression. We are all on a different part of the grid, no matter how hard we have worked on this. Sexism hurts men too. Tatum's quote about racism is true about sexism too, substituting gender for race.
Sheila Parks, Ed.D. is a researcher, writer and fundraiser who lives in Boston,MA. She is a long time feminist and peace & justice activist/organizer on many issues and has been involved in the current wave of voting rights for six years. She is an advocate for hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB) now.
We'll all do well to keep re-reading it from time to time as well... As of late, I've taken a break from commenting on many articles just to break my chain of repetitiveness and negativity! Although I have always tried to be mindful when making comments -quite often it's a knee-jerk response that slips by and winds up getting posted and subsequently regretted... When posting comments, we should hold ourselves to a high standard.
And -just like the conventional wisdom of not dialing up people in the middle of the night when you've been drinking... don't forget to stay off the keyboard if you've had a few too! Sounds silly, but seriously...
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C.Bid (0 articles, 7 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 647 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 9:46:55 AM
