I can’t think of a way to begin this comment to you, or even really what I want to say. The only thing I’m sure of is my motivation. That I want to reach out in the darkness that divides us, two people, one, who has poured out his heart and shared his worldview and his “how I see it”. The other, me, a white woman, up in her years. I think I hear you. It’s hard for me to not launch into defensiveness and justification. I’m going to do that, eventually, probably. I know I don’t have to tell you I don’t speak for the entire white race, and I know you don’t speak for the entire what-we-are-calling the Black race, as if we are different species in some sort of a competition. Well, maybe we are, but if so, it’s only because we’ve been forced into a pen, a fighting pen, to duke it out, for the benefit and amusement of the ruling oligarchical class. But I digress. I’m a particular individual with a particular past. I come from money. My parents were conservative racists who taught me carefully. They didn’t care about anybody. I didn’t care about anybody. The only suffering they ever did was the nose to the grindstone variety. The white folks who don’t care about Blacks, or immigrants, or homeless people, or genocide have never suffered. They protect themselves from exposure. I’m not going to sugar coat this. My father wound up murdering my mother and committing suicide, and that is what accelerated the crash course I was already on, hastening my journey to find my own heart. I had to ask for help and rebuild myself, beginning with resisting picking at my scabs, turning the page so I could slowly develop some skin, start to come back into the moment instead of sitting there, looking unplugged, or worse, just rocking. Complicated. I was very angry with them at the time of their deaths, which made it difficult to grieve. I have lived in fancy white neighborhoods, and I have lived in poor neighborhoods. People who are poor, who have suffered, are far kinder than the people I’ve met who are yuppies. Right now I am the only white person in my neighborhood and I ride the bus. It is the nicest neighborhood I have ever lived in.
There are kind, humanitarian, white people who are holding on to the middle class by a thread, too- maybe even fewer in numbers as we’re all financially stressed, but when I was rich I didn’t meet them, because I was too fucked up from my upbringing. But years of suffering and seeking teach a person how to be a person, and how to treat people. Every person I meet now I see as an individual, and I care about that person. I am writing all this to say I care about you. Going a little woo-woo now. As I went further inside, on the journey through suffering to find my own heart, my heart went further outside, past myself, my little circle of friends and family, to larger circles that included “what tortures did the Blacks go through? What are they going through now? Where is Iraq on the map? What is a Shiite Muslim?, what are those Eastern religions about?, How am I ever going to learn forgiveness?”, etc, etc. This is going to sound a little defensive, and maybe it is. When the 50.50 actions began, after a little research, and ever since, I’ve been having conversations with Black folk - again, I hate to use that distinction, but of course that really is the point- “Stay home! We white folk’ve got this! It’s our fucking turn to carry you on our backs, to be y’all’s human shield, etc.”. I do y best to do my homework, and I think it’s part of my job to learn about Black History and speak out against white washing the past, etc., etc. Now let me say this. Everybody has their particular issue that they champion. I am not Black, and while I firmly believe a Black Lives Matter and stand up against prejudice in conversation, and I am forceful about voting rights and election fairness and all the things most Left Wingers care about, Black is not my main issue. My burning interest is the intersection of artificial intelligence and consciousness, and really anything AI.
By the way, my career was in IT, I retired as a software consultant, and oh no, no, no, no. Fuck AI. It has fallen into the wrong hands and they're going to use it to oppress, suppress, and dominate further. Control voting machines all over this country and/or change votes. This place is looking more & more like Russia.
Thank you for putting so much thought and feeling into your reply and for sharing so openly. I hear a lifetime of weight behind your words — not just personal experience, but generational wounds and the exhaustion of constantly navigating racism from angles I’ll never fully know. I was deeply moved by what you shared, and I want you to know that, even imperfect as my understanding may be, I care.
You’re right — having money as a white woman protected me in ways you never had, even with your resources and your family’s. While I may have assumed we shared certain socioeconomic similarities, the contrast you described is real and painful. I’m grateful you trusted me with it. Once I left my family of origin, I never had to fear being killed randomly. You have had to navigate both systemic and overt racism, and I can only begin to understand that by listening, reading, and continuing to learn — which is how I came upon your writing in the first place.
The website cut me off before I could finish explaining why I mentioned AI, and I regret that it gave the wrong impression. I did not mean to imply that racism isn’t my concern. I only meant to be transparent about where much of my thinking has been focused lately — on AI, consciousness, and what it means to be human. These questions seem to me to be inseparable from justice for Black people. I worry about who will control and further develop these technologies, because if it continues to be driven by the profit motive, we are yet again going to be screwed harder and deeper by those folks who are really good at resisting accountability. The top 1% of power and wealth — another cause of massive anger for me. It’s the power elite that benefits from keeping all of us divided. I think you agree they have found ways to pit us against one another while picking our pockets.
Thank you as well for your compassion regarding my family story. While I can’t understand the Black experience from the inside, I can and will stand beside people who are discriminated against and scapegoated.
I take what you’ve said seriously, and I’m grateful, again, that you took my comments seriously as well.
I didn't see much defensiveness. Just a bit. What you don't know about me is that I come from money, too. Things aren't always what they seem, ma'am. There's a vast difference between having money while Black, and having it while white. You were shielded, while I became a beacon of hatred from the whites I grew up around.
In fact, though, I've covered the spectrum of class from rich to rags and in between.
Here's the thing, though. For every 1 of you out there, there are 10,000+ the exact opposite. Instead of getting bullied within the family structure, we get bullied by strangers ... anywhere, anytime, on any day. Always by fucking surprise. So, those of you who are vanilla white people, thinking you don't have skin in this game I speak of, you really do.
I have caring white people in my life, but that doesn't stop me from despising systemic racism. I experience it poor, middle-class, or rich. Of course we're not on your mind, but we should be. We were in the 60's, and it shouldn't take us starting shit in this country for that to happen. Your people killed all our leaders. Why don't you (or your friends) start some shit, because it's the only way racism will go away. Y'all created it, so it's your responsibility to get rid of it.
If you think it's not your problem overall, then again apathy created these monsters you're now having to deal with. We will do what we do regardless of you folks who think we should be out there getting killed for a country that hates us. No thanks. I did my time in the military, and had it not given me an awesome career, I would be bitter about the experience.
We're tired of the neglect, and if that's the status quo of the day, I shall separate myself from that nonsense. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with, if anything.
BTW, I'm 68 years old and have lived a life full of adversity. There's no way a white person can understand our experience in this country, but you can have compassion and know that if we don't get free, none of us are free. That's why it IS your problem to solve. All of you. We don't even have to be that involved. When we get positive things in this country, everybody seems to benefit. I don't know why it's that way, but maybe you can think of some of the reasons. Doesn't really matter in order to be a fact.
I'm sorry you had such a rotten family experience. That really sucks. Peace, lady!
Yeah, that's about it...
I can’t think of a way to begin this comment to you, or even really what I want to say. The only thing I’m sure of is my motivation. That I want to reach out in the darkness that divides us, two people, one, who has poured out his heart and shared his worldview and his “how I see it”. The other, me, a white woman, up in her years. I think I hear you. It’s hard for me to not launch into defensiveness and justification. I’m going to do that, eventually, probably. I know I don’t have to tell you I don’t speak for the entire white race, and I know you don’t speak for the entire what-we-are-calling the Black race, as if we are different species in some sort of a competition. Well, maybe we are, but if so, it’s only because we’ve been forced into a pen, a fighting pen, to duke it out, for the benefit and amusement of the ruling oligarchical class. But I digress. I’m a particular individual with a particular past. I come from money. My parents were conservative racists who taught me carefully. They didn’t care about anybody. I didn’t care about anybody. The only suffering they ever did was the nose to the grindstone variety. The white folks who don’t care about Blacks, or immigrants, or homeless people, or genocide have never suffered. They protect themselves from exposure. I’m not going to sugar coat this. My father wound up murdering my mother and committing suicide, and that is what accelerated the crash course I was already on, hastening my journey to find my own heart. I had to ask for help and rebuild myself, beginning with resisting picking at my scabs, turning the page so I could slowly develop some skin, start to come back into the moment instead of sitting there, looking unplugged, or worse, just rocking. Complicated. I was very angry with them at the time of their deaths, which made it difficult to grieve. I have lived in fancy white neighborhoods, and I have lived in poor neighborhoods. People who are poor, who have suffered, are far kinder than the people I’ve met who are yuppies. Right now I am the only white person in my neighborhood and I ride the bus. It is the nicest neighborhood I have ever lived in.
There are kind, humanitarian, white people who are holding on to the middle class by a thread, too- maybe even fewer in numbers as we’re all financially stressed, but when I was rich I didn’t meet them, because I was too fucked up from my upbringing. But years of suffering and seeking teach a person how to be a person, and how to treat people. Every person I meet now I see as an individual, and I care about that person. I am writing all this to say I care about you. Going a little woo-woo now. As I went further inside, on the journey through suffering to find my own heart, my heart went further outside, past myself, my little circle of friends and family, to larger circles that included “what tortures did the Blacks go through? What are they going through now? Where is Iraq on the map? What is a Shiite Muslim?, what are those Eastern religions about?, How am I ever going to learn forgiveness?”, etc, etc. This is going to sound a little defensive, and maybe it is. When the 50.50 actions began, after a little research, and ever since, I’ve been having conversations with Black folk - again, I hate to use that distinction, but of course that really is the point- “Stay home! We white folk’ve got this! It’s our fucking turn to carry you on our backs, to be y’all’s human shield, etc.”. I do y best to do my homework, and I think it’s part of my job to learn about Black History and speak out against white washing the past, etc., etc. Now let me say this. Everybody has their particular issue that they champion. I am not Black, and while I firmly believe a Black Lives Matter and stand up against prejudice in conversation, and I am forceful about voting rights and election fairness and all the things most Left Wingers care about, Black is not my main issue. My burning interest is the intersection of artificial intelligence and consciousness, and really anything AI.
By the way, my career was in IT, I retired as a software consultant, and oh no, no, no, no. Fuck AI. It has fallen into the wrong hands and they're going to use it to oppress, suppress, and dominate further. Control voting machines all over this country and/or change votes. This place is looking more & more like Russia.
Thank you for putting so much thought and feeling into your reply and for sharing so openly. I hear a lifetime of weight behind your words — not just personal experience, but generational wounds and the exhaustion of constantly navigating racism from angles I’ll never fully know. I was deeply moved by what you shared, and I want you to know that, even imperfect as my understanding may be, I care.
You’re right — having money as a white woman protected me in ways you never had, even with your resources and your family’s. While I may have assumed we shared certain socioeconomic similarities, the contrast you described is real and painful. I’m grateful you trusted me with it. Once I left my family of origin, I never had to fear being killed randomly. You have had to navigate both systemic and overt racism, and I can only begin to understand that by listening, reading, and continuing to learn — which is how I came upon your writing in the first place.
The website cut me off before I could finish explaining why I mentioned AI, and I regret that it gave the wrong impression. I did not mean to imply that racism isn’t my concern. I only meant to be transparent about where much of my thinking has been focused lately — on AI, consciousness, and what it means to be human. These questions seem to me to be inseparable from justice for Black people. I worry about who will control and further develop these technologies, because if it continues to be driven by the profit motive, we are yet again going to be screwed harder and deeper by those folks who are really good at resisting accountability. The top 1% of power and wealth — another cause of massive anger for me. It’s the power elite that benefits from keeping all of us divided. I think you agree they have found ways to pit us against one another while picking our pockets.
Thank you as well for your compassion regarding my family story. While I can’t understand the Black experience from the inside, I can and will stand beside people who are discriminated against and scapegoated.
I take what you’ve said seriously, and I’m grateful, again, that you took my comments seriously as well.
Namaste.
I didn't see much defensiveness. Just a bit. What you don't know about me is that I come from money, too. Things aren't always what they seem, ma'am. There's a vast difference between having money while Black, and having it while white. You were shielded, while I became a beacon of hatred from the whites I grew up around.
In fact, though, I've covered the spectrum of class from rich to rags and in between.
Here's the thing, though. For every 1 of you out there, there are 10,000+ the exact opposite. Instead of getting bullied within the family structure, we get bullied by strangers ... anywhere, anytime, on any day. Always by fucking surprise. So, those of you who are vanilla white people, thinking you don't have skin in this game I speak of, you really do.
I have caring white people in my life, but that doesn't stop me from despising systemic racism. I experience it poor, middle-class, or rich. Of course we're not on your mind, but we should be. We were in the 60's, and it shouldn't take us starting shit in this country for that to happen. Your people killed all our leaders. Why don't you (or your friends) start some shit, because it's the only way racism will go away. Y'all created it, so it's your responsibility to get rid of it.
If you think it's not your problem overall, then again apathy created these monsters you're now having to deal with. We will do what we do regardless of you folks who think we should be out there getting killed for a country that hates us. No thanks. I did my time in the military, and had it not given me an awesome career, I would be bitter about the experience.
We're tired of the neglect, and if that's the status quo of the day, I shall separate myself from that nonsense. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with, if anything.
BTW, I'm 68 years old and have lived a life full of adversity. There's no way a white person can understand our experience in this country, but you can have compassion and know that if we don't get free, none of us are free. That's why it IS your problem to solve. All of you. We don't even have to be that involved. When we get positive things in this country, everybody seems to benefit. I don't know why it's that way, but maybe you can think of some of the reasons. Doesn't really matter in order to be a fact.
I'm sorry you had such a rotten family experience. That really sucks. Peace, lady!