Charles M. Blow

Birth:

Death:

One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm.. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man.
Then there are ever-present terms like “racial unity” and “racial division.” America loves to frame race in this country around unity rather than equality. But, to do so robs the oppressed of legitimate grievance. I’ve never understood the aim of bringing people together in unity absent the removal of anti-Black white supremacist social and political frameworks. It is one thing to experience transracial unity with an ally who is fighting just as hard for your liberation as you are. But it is literally impossible for me to unify with someone perfectly happy with the current state of affairs, which included the oppression of people who look like me. Most of these phrases suggest a false premise, that white people and nonwhite ones are operating from equal positions of power in this society and are simply not getting along or agreeing on issues. In other words, by implication, they make nonwhite people equally at fault for the state of race in America, when both history and social science demonstrate, unequivocally, that this is not true.

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