"Your Move, Chief:"

 

"Something occurred to me... You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about... you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine.  And you ripped my f**kin' life apart. You're an orphan, right?  Do you think I'd  know how hard your life has been because I read Oliver Twist?"

We white people react to accusations of racial discrimination a lot like Will to Sean's efforts at therapeutic inquiry: by being defensive, closed off, and just a little abusive.  We throw the self-protective tactics of minority communities back at them as signs of moral failure, much the way a few British Conservatives still do to Northern Irish Catholics.  But minority B.S. is just reacting to white abuse and humiliation, and, although they can clean up their act as much as they want...

they can't clean up ours.

Only we can do that.  And for this to happen, just like Will in the movie, we will have to open our minds up to our own bad thinking habits and the problems others run into when they meet our anti-social defense mechanisms.  And until we do, there will be no end to the redlining, the job and housing discrimination, or the withholding of social or economic support which subjects these people to unnecessary hardship and shaming.  

The ball is in our court.  It's our move.

Anyone have any thoughts or stories about encounters with discrimination?

Posted by Jennifer A. Nolan

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