Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Robert Jensen article

Here's a segment from this fairly short article by Robert Jensen:

Imagine that you could line white people up in front of a door and get them to really believe that if they walked into a "race-changing room" they would emerge on the other side with black skin ... Then ask whites to set their price -- the amount of money it would take them to agree to enter that room. Imagine ... an attendant ... with stacks of cash to hand to the white folks. ... let's say the cash award is tax free. ...when white people really had to face the possibility of being black -- knowing all they know about the reality of life in white-supremacist America -- what would the price be?

My guess is that a significant percentage of whites would not become black for any amount of money. I also am fairly confident that the median price set by the whites who might be willing to go into the room would be considerably more than $1 million.

In that moment of choice...the problem wouldn't be that we whites don't know enough. We know plenty. The issue would be whether or not we had transcended the deeply rooted white supremacy of the culture. In that moment, we would find out about the depth of white people's commitment to a color-blind society. [or not]