An example—it’s better than nothing!—is that I know a Black woman in the South who lives next door to a huge racist. He saw her struggling so started coming over to fix things in her yard! Then down all his flags. (She didn’t ask he just did it.) She became an ‘us’ to him. He won’t truly change tho
For him, bc he's white, he's inherently superior, good, meritorious, etc. (cultural rep) & Black folk are inherently inferior, lazy, bad, etc. (marginalized peasant). But there can be good peasants, partial exceptions. She's not "us", but she's not quite "them" & he can help her as a neighbor.
I know racist minds have been destroyed by racism on one level but seeing it close up the way she has gotten me to do—I just feel so desperate for this whole worldview to end forever. Reconstruction was our chance but we have to do it. How anyone can want that ‘culture’ to survive…it’s maddening.
Yes, I guess that’s it. The South is a trip. She is 82. You would not believe the intimacy between her and these racists. And she knows what racism is, she has a very good analysis. She knows just how they are. They are like children to her, though. They need her to be kind so she is kind.
But if you help all Black folk, as part of helping everyone, then you're getting rid of "us" as the superior righteous worthy; you're changing the social order, removing the hierarchies that give him status & power, elevating inferiors as equal, pointing out his status as righteous worthy was false.
Right. It HAS to end. It’s like a horror movie but with millions of people.