{"id":38648,"date":"2014-11-30T19:13:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T19:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38648"},"modified":"2014-11-30T19:13:14","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T19:13:14","slug":"what-white-people-need-to-know-and-do-after-ferguson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38648","title":{"rendered":"What white people need to know, and do, after Ferguson"},"content":{"rendered":"

What white people need to know, and do, after Ferguson<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2014-11-28<\/p>\n

Sally Kohn<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Benefiting from white privilege is automatic. Defending white privilege is a choice.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the days before the grand jury\u2019s decision in Ferguson<\/a>, when Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon<\/a> decided to impose a pre-emptive state of emergency, a white relative posted on my Facebook page, \u201cBetter to be prepared for the worse, than to have racially charged riot. [sic<\/em>] At that point, no one cares what your political view points are, who you married or what God you pray too, only that you are White and you are Wrong.\u201d This essay is for my cousin and every other white person who is well meaning but somehow feels hopelessly polarized in a racially polarized debate. It doesn\u2019t have to be that way.<\/p>\n

When black people are protesting in Ferguson<\/a> and across America, they\u2019re not protesting against<\/em> white people. Maybe this seems obvious, but it\u2019s worth stating. In fact, in the case of Ferguson, the protests weren\u2019t (primarily) about one white cop. Black communities are ultimately protesting systems of injustice and inequality that structurally help white people while systematically harming black people. Just because you\u2019re white and therefore generally benefit from those systems doesn\u2019t mean you inherently support those systems \u2014 or need to defend them. Benefiting from white privilege is automatic. Defending white privilege is a choice.<\/p>\n

Privilege is like oxygen: You don\u2019t realize it\u2019s there until it\u2019s gone. As white folks, we can\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to go through life without racial privilege because we literally haven\u2019t. You may have heard stories about black friends being monitored in department stores or seen the research that black names on resumes get half as many job interviews as white names on the same resumes. Maybe you know that a black man or boy is killed every 28 hours<\/em><\/a> in America by police or vigilantes. Maybe you\u2019ve read the studies on implicit \u201cshooter bias\u201d<\/a> \u2014 how we\u2019re all more likely to pull a simulated trigger on unarmed black men than unarmed white men \u2014 and maybe you know that even the most egalitarian Americans harbor unconscious negative attitudes<\/a> about black people. The studies and the stories are overwhelming. Just this week, police shot and killed a black 12-year-old for holding a BB gun<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What white people need to know, and do, after Ferguson The Washington Post 2014-11-28 Sally Kohn Benefiting from white privilege is automatic. Defending white privilege is a choice. In the days before the grand jury\u2019s decision in Ferguson, when Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon decided to impose a pre-emptive state of emergency, a white relative posted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,394,20],"tags":[17765,773,18584,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-38648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-ferguson","tag-missouri","tag-sally-kohn","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}