Thank you. I've always gotten a bad sense about RDA, couldn't put a finger on it. I've read many of the Black writers you mentioned in this article, and get a much better sense from those. I especially like the novels of Maya Angelou, Octavia E. Butler, and Zora Neale Hurston among others. These show Black characters as well-rounded human beings. They have to deal with racism -- but that's not all that they're about.
I like what you said that, rather than a lifetime of self-flagellating, we can address and achieve more reasonable goals at any time. And the only person one can really change is oneself.
Reading many of the articles on Medium, I get the impression that Black people think about race all the time, and are, as James Baldwin put it, in a rage practically all the time. Yet the Black people I see every day -- neighbors, co-workers, and family -- don't seem to be like that. Maybe they're masking all the time, kind of like how we autistic folks have to do? I don't know, but living in a rage all the time is a pretty miserable way to live. Been there, done that.
Had to sit thru a set of DiAngelo videos as part of required diversity training at work, I knew I should stay silent because anything I said could and would be used against me. Afterward, I had to call the suicide hotline. DiAngelo's videos had awakened the dormant racial self-hate I'd carried all my life since I'd seen school integration as a child, been horrified by the hatred that the adults in my family expressed toward my new classmates, and knew that I was the same color -- and thus of the same nature? -- as my KKK-sympathizing elders. I wonder how many other people need a suicide hotline after attending a DiAngelo workshop? If allies are needed in the struggle, it wouldn't make much sense if we all killed ourselves off! (EDIT: probably not many white folks would become suicidal over a DiAngelo presentation; I was pre-disposed by what I’d seen as a child. However, there are probably a great many white folks who would decide it’s all a bunch of bunk, fall down a google rabbit hole, and come out the other end as conscious committed white nationalists. Either way, we lose supporters and racism wins.)
Ironically, the woman who answered the phone was Black! She asked if there's anything I like to do that makes me happy and that I hadn't done in a while. I replied that I like to write music and play the guitar and sing. but hadn't done it in a while because I was afraid of committing cultural appropriation. Then she asked me if I knew any Black people in real life and if any of them had heard me sing and had accused me of cultural appropriation. I replied. my daughter, many of my neighbors, and a few of my co-workers are Black. My daughter and neighbors had heard and liked my music and didn't accuse me of anything like that.
"There you go!" she replied. "Use the voice God gave you!"
This! God gave me a voice to sing with? Really? Not fallen angels or Dr. Yakub?
Fork DiAngelo!
-- Just an Old Hippie
