Reader TTS

I hated the book, felt talked down to, as I already knew I had internalized racism that I worked hard to neutralize. My black friends and colleagues wondered why I didn’t like the book. Was

I a racist? It was a good external and internal discussion. Then I saw my white liberal neighborhood struggle to change its name from a plantation owner’s name to something else. Should be a

no-brainer, right? I mean, who wants a white supremacist’s name on the place you live? Especially when in the first minutes of our zoom call a historian reads a black man’s witnessing of

the way this slave owner treated people. Done. Next! I watched diangelo’s talk on YouTube and finally got it what she was saying. You can line up almost all of her arguments in our

neighborhood chat and zoom call. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Yes, she is making money as a white woman talking about racism and hopefully is using it for good things like

justice. But, she has us white people nailed. People in these comments mock her for her humility in publicly calling out her own racism. No shit. That is the kind of stuff us white people do

as a function of our privilege. She is talking about it, owning it, and about how to repair. We need the mirror she provides for our privilege. AND, yes, we need to do meaningful things

beyond changing names. It is only the start of the conversation and action. It is the continuation of reconstruction that only lasted 8 years. It is the rot the pervades America. Diangelo

calls it out. Watch the YouTube video of her in a library somewhere! Don’t bother with the book. And, for what it is worth, my well-meaning white neighborhood is still struggling with a

simple name change. It has been more than half a year. We are a microcosm of the American struggle with racism and race.