Courtesy of EBONY.com
Due to the widespread refusal of Whites to address or acknowledge the persistence of racism, there is often an absence of White voices saying much about race… unless it’s along the lines of “We’re over it! It’s not a big deal anymore! Why are you people so mad, get over it? Slavery was, what, 800 years ago?”
A new story in Philadelphia magazine is set to change that, baby. Who said Mumia Abu Jamal could be Philly’s only “voice of the voiceless”? Robert Huber is finally here to provide White people the opportunity to have their say. From “Being White in Philly” (emphasis mine):
“What gets examined publicly about race is generally one-dimensional, looked at almost exclusively from the perspective of people of color. Of course, it is Black people who have faced generations of discrimination and who deal with it still. But our public discourse ignores the fact that race—particularly in a place like Philadelphia—is also an issue for White people. Though White people never talk about it.
“Everyone might have a race story, but few Whites risk the third-rail danger of speaking publicly about race, given the long, troubled history of race relations in this country and even more so in this city. Race is only talked about in a sanitized form, when it’s talked about at all, with actual thoughts and feelings buried, which only ups the ante. Race remains the elephant in the room, even on the absurd level of who holds the door to enter a convenience store.”
You see, for Huber, the real tragedy of Philadelphia’s race problem is not the systemic racism that has funneled his Black neighbors into the prison industrial complex, populated broken schools, generational poverty and early death… it’s the inability of the city’s Whites to be heard. Oh, and he awkwardly holds the door for Black people at Wawa so they don’t think he’s a racist. The struggle is real.
