I commented about this out loud in the car with my son (he's 13). He said all his friends--Black, white, Asian, Latinx--know Blackface is racist. HE'S 13. Folks shouldn't get a pass for willful ignorance.
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Cory Booker said he had conversations with some of his white friends who said, "I don't understand this Blackface thing."
Cory Booker is 49. If his old ass white friends don't understand Blackface at damn near 50-years-old, why are they his friends? 
https://twitter.com/drewshane/status/1094640420729090048 …
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Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Might help to listen to the rest of what Booker was on about.
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I watched the whole clip.
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And that was your only takeaway? Okay.
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Have you ever had the conversations that Corey is talking about? Because, one thing they make clear is how intelectualized racism can get from the White participants. In other words, they can be stressful as hell for the minority participant.
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Booker and I are about the same age, have a similar professional background, same ethnicity. Difference is I've spent many years in the Southern US, so yeah, I've had similar conversations. I think his example was not something that actually happened but illustrated a point
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@Crommunist@drewshane@washingtonpost I am so white I glow in the dark. I've always known blackface is wrong. -
I had to explain twice this week what it meant, it wasn't that they didn't know it was wrong, it was complete ignorance of the term itself. Reaction to definition was the same, Why the hell would someone do that!
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I find it truly astonishing that people wouldn't know the term - it's part of history and being aware.
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Clearly we as a country, and we as white people in particular, are falling down on teaching against racism.
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I agree and am just as disgusted, but coming to learn that many WP have been so insulated that they literally don't know the history and implications of these things. ...
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The fact is, systemic and institutional segregation has set up a society in which many WP don't actually know POC in their everyday lives. Not in their neighborhoods, schools, offices...not in their revisionist history books on in their popular movies and music. ...
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It's certainly far better today, but back in the 70's, 80's and even 90's, in many areas of the country, they had little or no contact. This is why institutional segregation produces such deep and long-lasting damage. ...
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I feel extremely fortunate to have been raised in a diverse family and attended a diverse public school in a diverse and relatively well-educated community. Not everyone has had these opportunities and many families actively avoid them. ...
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It's incredibly destructive. These are just my thoughts...I'm no expert. It definitely seems that the younger generations, like your kids, "get it" more than the generation before. It is progress, but slow progress is so frustrating!
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The flip side: how true to his ethnicity was he around his white friends? My knee jerk response: I don’t want an race apologist as president in a racism America. Every white friend I know, knows blackface is wrong, they don’t need to know the why, but they know that too.
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a little louder for the folks in the back.
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Put yourself in a white person’s position? We’re just going to pretend being white means you can’t understand why racism is bad? We seriously need to stop getting a pass and seeing our perspective as the default, or we’ll always be able to back to “racism is just my opinion.”
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Thank you! White being the default is the foundation of white supremacy.
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