How to Talk to Your White Uncle
Once again, I did the thing that I tell other White people not to do. It took a day or two for my words to come back at me, to understand them. My Black friend told me about a situation that made me unhappy. It was a situation where she was being treated a certain way apart from the rest of the crowd. But she was more upset by a mutual friend: she felt he'd made excuses for the way she was treated. I told her that her perspective resonated with me, and then I made excuses for my old White uncle. He thinks he's teaching. He's looking at it from a legal perspective. He's from a different era. He's not really racist. This is not Uncle Jim Bob who spits on the factory floor & talks about the good graces of PBR , but a professional in many industries. I didn't realize right away what I was doing. In this case, my Black friend and I both know our Uncle is an ally. But, perhaps unintentionally, he's either defending the system or conveying that it can't be...