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White People: Educate Yourselves!
Black people are not responsible for your ignorance or laziness
by Sharon Turnoy
It is no longer the responsibility of Black citizens to educate White racists, even the well-meaning, unintentional racists (which I hope are most of them) who haven’t bothered to examine themselves yet.
It is the responsibility of people of white skin color to educate other people of white skin color, especially those with economic and political privilege on top of ethnic privilege, to put in the effort to trigger the self-examination that will result in a realization like this one:
Only if we all examine and acknowledge our own learned racism, not deny it, may we one day eliminate racist actions in any meaningful way.
What could I possibly know about racism? you may ask. As a one-time secular Jew growing up with an Orthodox father in a Billy Graham Crusades neighborhood, and as the only Jew that you may ever meet who came from a legitimately lower-economic background, I began to feel anti-Semitism at about three years old.
I remember asking my mother (and she confirmed I did), “If we have to be Jewish, why can’t we be rich? Everybody thinks we…
