Reply to Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP.

I agree with the posters that say you should abandon this effort because you sound tone-deaf and a perfect example of white fragility.  I am African-American (ADOS) 1st Washingtonian who has lurked on this site for 10 years and I view most of the DCUM posters to be unintentional segregationists. with a heavy sprinkling of bona fide racists.

The Founding Fathers of this country created a system to keep people like me subservient to White people because they believed we were inherently less than. This system was built to last so that even if slavery was abolished, even if Jim Crow was abolished, their effects would continue on.  That's how systemic racism works  i.e. unintentional acts of the so-called "majority" work in favor to keep the "minority" as lesser. Even though red-lining was stopped in the 80's - its effects linger.  Even though Brown ended school segregation, I still felt its effects as a DCPS student attending my segregated elementary school in Columbia Heights in the 80s.

I think what many of us who disagree with you in writing this rebuttal is that two things can both be true - the majority of DCUM posters can be "segregationist" unintentionally and this is a complex problem that is not easily solved.

As an aside, an integrated school is one where the inbound students come from different races.  In my opinion, Deal and Wilson are diverse but I don't view them as integrated since the neighborhoods that are considered inbound are not integrated. Diversity does not equal integration but that’s just my opinion.

As for solutions, why can’t Brookings raise awareness to an issue?  Why do they have to offer solutions?  History has shown us that each time a solution that could have offered equity to African-Americans was floated it was shot down, abandoned or destroyed i.e. 40 acres and a mule or the North's protection during Reconstruction, or the Civil Rights Movement.  As a starting point to dismantling this system, one could become aware of the issues so that when solutions are aired -  like a move away from neighborhood based schools (since DC neighborhoods are segregated) you fight for it rather than against them.

I get that you are upset they used your site without providing you notice and I understand why you're writing this.  While will not agree on this topic, I wish you luck with crafting your rebuttal.  [/quote]

Elevating this PP's perspective again. I really think after a dozen pages of comments, this is still the most important. Other posters have also raised the issue of white fragility and tone deafness and I do think there is a good bit of that going on with your feelings on this, Jeff. I certainly believe that your intentions are good. You spend what is surely a huge amount of time deleting the openly racist content. I appreciate that effort. However, there is no way around the fact that much of the commentary is fueled by veiled racism. If this forum did not exist, those conversations would still exist in other corners of the internet or in small private groups. It feels  hollow to claim that because Brookings' methods were not great, that therefore DCUM cannot be painted as racist. It doesn't take academic research to see the racism here loud and clear. Think about all the racist comments you delete. Those same posters are writing other threads, with their same racist mindsets fueling their other comments. One does not turn the racism off when jumping from one board to another. The attitudes permeate all that they do.

It almost feels that you are defending yourself, and that you feel personally offended by Brookings' characterization of the DCUM hive mind as racist.  Brookings is not attacking YOU as a person. I wonder if what you might be grappling with is subconscious guilt at the fact that you earn an income from running this site where people are able to participate in continued propping up of a bad system. I don't know if you should feel guilt for that, given that we are nearly all complicit in propping up bad, racist systems unless one works for some antiracism nonprofit or something. For those who would take offense to that - check yourselves. If you work for any place where there are ever any racist actions or historic biased systems that formed the current hierarchy, and you are not publicly (within that org) working to dismantle the system, you are complicit in it.  My DH is a Black man and works at a BigLaw firm. He too, is complicit in and compensated by a biased system. Every moment he does not call out the biases in the structure or each microaggression, he is complicit in the system. He makes a choice to be complicit to support his family. We all make those choices. That doesn't make it objectively right, but we all do it.  I don't know how to go about fixing these systems without blowing them all up.

I don't say all this to say that you should end DCUM. I  appreciate knowing the full depths of how terrible people are as an important gut check for myself.  I am glad to know what the rich, racist folks are saying behind closed doors and I also appreciate the helpful things I've learned here as well.

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