Reply to Woke dems rename Lee-Jackson Hwy in Fairfax County, Virginia

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "Woke dems rename Lee-Jackson Hwy in Fairfax County, Virginia "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Removing Lee and Jackson’s names from roads and schools is the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit. All it does is make smug, self-righteous, and privileged white people feel good about themselves.

Want to make real change? Reform the tax, housing, zoning, education, law enforcement, and transportation policies that continue to uphold systematic racism in 2023 and trap a growing underclass of mostly Black and brown people. [/quote]

Why not both? If anything, the backlash from neo-Confederates against even the "lowest hanging fruit" should underscore how politically difficult it is to dismantle systemic racism and effect real change. Not that that's an excuse. But our public officials should keep pushing forward on all fronts; progress on one doesn't imply lack of effort on others.[/quote]

Except we’re not really doing both.[/quote]

Here are the choices:

1. Action that's primarily symbolic, only
2. Action that's primarily symbolic AND action that's more direct
3. No action

I think option 1 (action that's primarily symbolic, only) is better than option 3 (no action). Don't you?[/quote]

This is the white person cop-out.

Take a symbolic action and say, “Hey! It’s better than nothing.”[/quote]

I’m AA and don’t know one black person who does not support these name changes. We can concurrently demand substantive changes to our laws and get rid of insulting street names, memorials, etc. (And for the “erasing history” nuts, trust me, we also understand the importance of [i]accurately[/i] learning all about this history in schools, museums, documentaries, tv, movies, etc.).[/quote]

Of course, we can concurrently demand substantive changes to our laws and the removal of insulting street names and memorials. The problem is white people of all political ideologies still have disproportionate power in this country, and most are going to do everything they can to hold onto it. Changing street names and removing memorials makes people, especially the liberal white people in charge, feel good about themselves, but it doesn’t change the underlying structures of racism that keep mostly Black and brown people in a state of economic poverty and political powerlessness. That’s where the real change is needed and that’s where the real change isn’t happening.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics