In a July 7, 2016 New York Times op-ed, Michael Eric Dyson speaks to the killings of Alton B. Sterling, Philando Castile, and five police officers in Dallas. “Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.”
Death in Black and White
by lindaoppenheim | Jul 8, 2016 | Opinion | 1 comment
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Dyson’s article outlined several factual details about the disillusion of whiteness – first, that being black is different than white people and secondly, that black people are less than human. I realize that these continuing conversations about race spark from public incidents of police officers killing black men.
But this problem goes so far beyond those incidents. The American social pathology remains deeply rooted in racism. The social campaigns that have existed for centuries and remain steadfast has taught and reinforced the message that black people have no value. Daily people are flooded with messages through language and visual media depicting black people in a negative light. The images cry out that all black people are evil.
After centuries of receiving the same message over and over through television, movies, books, and every social media outlet available to man – white people are domesticated, trained, programmed, and conditioned to automatically fear black people, why are people so shocked when people act on that fear? Change starts with individuals realizing the historical lies by challenging the racist system – challenge articles and all social media outlets that characterized racial stereotypes, stop laughing at racial jokes, and take an active stand for social justice because it starts with you….