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White Saviors

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On my way to the weekly COVID test, I passed by the faculty protest in defense of black people from fairness and due process. It’s raining like a bastard so the people who turned out to stand in the rain on a Friday afternoon are true believers. There are nine total, and of course, they are all extremely white. I saw a black student make a sarcastic face as he passed by the “white silence is violence” sign.

I’m scheduled to give a public talk (IN PERSON!!! Yay!!) on white saviorism in Peru on Wednesday and in really looking forward to it.

4 responses to “White Saviors”

  1. ed Avatar
    ed

    These people are such a joke. We used to make fun of them. When did people start taking them seriously?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Each of them could have spent that hour tutoring a black student at risk of failing. That would make a real difference. But they prefer to pose.

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      1. MT Avatar
        MT

        I completely agree with you on this, by the way, and have felt this way about this issue for as long as I’ve seriously considered it (about the last decade and a half).

        I disagree with your phrasing, though – the “but”. You’re presenting it as a choice people made, as though they mentally weighed tutoring a a black student in need of help and going to such a protest, and decided that the latter would be much more beneficial.

        There was never such a choice. The first option never entered the picture. The effort/sacrifice/disruption to one’s regular life required puts it out of consideration for 95% of people at these protests.

        There were BLM protests in the tiny town center of the rich Boston suburb I live in – basically a bunch of mostly teenagers standing with signs – and I stared so hard as we were driving by to see if there was a single black person there, that one of the girls stared back and grinned, and probably told her friends that they were making this racist white woman really uncomfortable.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I agree completely. This is particularly galling to me because I’ve organized at my department free tutoring services that are really helping black students who never had a chance to be in a good language program in high school. It’s really working! The results are amazing. But not a single person of all who are blabbing constantly about racial inequities and anti-racism are putting anything into the program in terms of funding, time, or anything. I’m not asking for much, believe me. I hate this hypocrisy.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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