Social Change Only Happens When We Meet People Where They Are, Not With Our Rage & Fear

...i may be wrong, but it seems like the intricacies of how white privilege is built, maintained and how people benefit from a system is a complicated understanding...and I think because it's complicated and (dare I say liberal arts educated language explains it) people tend to fall back on "just work hard and stop complaining" as a way of understanding how institutionalized racism works...so when people say stupid shit about ways that are suggested for them to fight, it's because dismantling what's going on from a place of public relationships, economics, history and institutions is really far beyond a lot of people...they only see the world from their limited personal experience...

I'm treated unfairly, that's life, fuck it, react from fear and anger. trying to understand political and economic systems is overwhelming to people...for example, people still don't get that the poor white folks who follow trump are being duped because his corporate politics have moved all the middle class jobs to foreign countries where he runs his business by enslaving people basically...the average person is like I'm unemployed, poor and afraid of terrorism, so i need a gun and to kill anyone who scares me...sounds reductive, but when people are scared, intellectual process about the larger system is an impossible argument to win...

and telling people to anaylize history in a country that doesn't teach it or teach people how to analyze history, economics and power is a large fear...i'm often in meetings with lefties of all colors and find the arguments so filled with analytical language that i have no way to get at the emotional heart of an argument...

there needs to be a really concrete, meat and potatoes way of explaining power, class, money and capitalism working against poor people in this country ...and race is simply the cover for getting rid of an entire race of people you no longer have jobs for because capitalism have shifted the game....

it's a complicated system and part of why we're losing the battle is because the language around understanding it is complicated....

so getting mad at people and sending them complicated documents with intellectual argument that are essentially telling them, you're privileged, shut up....actually doesn't work...and unless the wider population really begins to see how this system is constructed, we're never going to get everyone on the same page about how to dismantle it...

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