By BLAIR FOSTER and MICHÈLE STEPHENSON

Why do so many white people find it extremely uncomfortable to talk about race? Setting out to make the next installment of our Op-Doc video series about race in America, we hoped to address that question. Because we live in New York, where there is no shortage of opinions, we didn’t think it would be too hard to find white people willing to speak publicly on this topic. We were wrong.

…when we dug a bit deeper, the discussion gets tense, and visibly uncomfortable.

With this Op-Doc video, we’ve attempted to lean into that discomfort and prompt some self-reflection. We are all part of this system, and therefore we all have a responsibility to work toward dismantling it. If we’re going to have an honest conversation about race in America, that includes thinking — and talking — about what it means to be white in America. It might be uncomfortable, but it’s a conversation that must involve all of us.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.nytimes.com

By Glenn Robinson

The system the authors are referring to is probably the system of disenfranchisement and oppression held up by what Dr. Martin Luther King called the Doctrine of White Supremacy.

Anyone can believe in the Doctrine of White Supremacy; a doctrine that believes that White is right and worthy and that people of color are undeserving of equal opportunities and equal humane treatment.

We see inequality play out in the way immigration laws are written to favor the highly educated, while (im)migrants in labor and agriculture are demonized.

We also see that the U.S. will not offer universal single payer health care – as if all humans do not deserve equal treatment by the health care industry.

And we see the prison industrial complex incarcerate disproportionately high numbers of Black and Latino people; and the military industrial complex recruit disproportionately high numbers of Black and Latino people.

And we see disproportionately high numbers of killings of unarmed Black and Latino people by the police.