Now Listen, Whitey (Racism)

Here's one Whitey who listens from the heart. Kyle Korver, the NBA shooting guard for the Utah Jazz, provides the most tender, personal, and affecting commentary on the subject of racism that could ever be delivered on the white side of the tracks (link: Privileged). While no white should ever presume to speak for a person of color, the piece does invite an honest discussion at a fundamental human level. This Member Monday session is dedicated to the proposition that failure to openly and honestly address the topic of racism only drives it further underground where it continues to metastasize.  

By way of background, we addressed racism in our very first Member Monday session nearly three years ago (MM 7/5/16) with our discussion of Howard Zinn's A People's History Of the United States -- that MM session itself being a follow-up to a club lunch presentation on the topic of slavery. Zinn's book is a re-telling of the traditional historical narrative (told by the victors) this time from the perspective of the vanquished. The underlying thesis of the book is we can see the present only with a clear-eyed view of the past.

And, so, we will revisit the central question whether racism is the result of some natural antipathy on the part of whites towards blacks or rather is the residue of some long-ingrained social system. If it's the latter, as most believe, the discussion will center around the government's role and effectiveness in addressing such residue as a systemic issue. 

Kyle Korver, however, probably gets closer to the mark when he simply says "we all have to hold each other accountable."