Looking at the litany of defensive comments and blame-throwing, it’s clear you’ve agitated a good many. Most humans are guilty of some benefiting from some system of privilege- racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity. Can we all just accept our complicity and move on to the important part? As White People, what should we be doing instead? When you tell people in power who are used to having agency in their lives there’s a problem, after they are done processing the guilt, their next response is often, “how can I fix it?” Perhaps this response is naive, but we absolutely must start somewhere. John, any advice? But I don’t want to through it all back on you like it’s your responsibility, so here are some ideas.
Passive: Listen and be supportive.
That one’s pretty straightforward. Starting with reading and recommending this article and others like feels like a good first step.
Active: Practice bias-filtering in daily living.
Example: Let’s break down and counteract our own biases when reading resumes or reviewing candidates for a position. Where to start? (Hint: It’s not just about race.) When I was hiring interns or receptionists and slogging through 500+ resumes I used to ignore candidates from “bad” or less academically competitive schools thinking I wanted only the smartest students and had to winnow the pile somehow. I realized I was disproportionately excluding candidates from lower-income backgrounds and consequently many PoC, however unintentionally. In an effort to counter this, I decided to post the internship offering at a local university that tended to cater to more lower income students to try to improve our diversity of interns and committed to hiring some of those students. That said, it was still very hard not to gravitate to the candidates who “remind me of me.” So it’s more about a daily process of acknowledging your internal bias and trying to counteract it as many ways as possible.
Political: Work to reverse the trend in America that is increasingly supporting the wealthy and eroding social mobility since race and class often intersect.
- Support public school funding and public goods
- Support an increase in income tax for the wealthy
There’s a host of other things that could help change this, in fact Rebuild The Dream has a 10 point plan.
