How I Escaped Becoming Dylann Roof

[Blue_Tires]

A constant hum of racist propaganda and bad advice almost led me to death and destruction because, I was told, black people were out to kill the white identity. I’m still plagued and haunted by those lies to this day. Here’s how I got out.
In 1975 Baton Rouge, when I was 16, my racist Svengali and I conspired to burn a house occupied by black people we didn’t know as revenge for the stabbing of a friend.

I was certain no one in the house had done the stabbing, even though my Svengali had convinced himself someone there had. Our friend had been stabbed in a fight started by the Svengali and lived on a street rapidly shifting from mostly white to all black, just as my own street soon would. I’d tried to convince myself that our act would be an act of “war,” a defensive message against black “invaders.”

Thank goodness the better lessons from, ironically, my racist parents and my racist church (that had voted not to allow in African Americans) brought me to my senses and I rebelled against the Svengali, who evidently needed my support to go forward. The house stood.

And yet, the next year I participated in a gang fight at school after a hardcore racist acquaintance’s car was shot twice and his grandmother beaten by some of our African-American classmates. In my mind, I was no longer fighting all African Americans, but rather out of a sense of honor, taking down “uncivilized invaders,” as if I’d stepped out of a bastardized Sir Walter Scott novel and forward to 110 years after the Civil War.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/01/how-i-escaped-becoming-dylann-roof.html

[underpants]

1. Scarey

Will read the whole thing later

[Paka]

2. Bookmarked to read later.

[Jefferson23]

3. A jaw dropper:

**Let me repeat: Many of these toxic thoughts, and much worse, still poison me, despite my years of work to see clearly, truly, and with complexity. On my worst days, if a black person does something I don’t like or reinforces a stereotype still lodged in me, the N-word comes to mind quickly and sharply. Then I have to gather myself, bring reason to bear, once again dredge up the roots of these thoughts, and once more disconnect racist wiring laid in me since my childhood and recharged today by white institutions and media.

It is up to the individual, yes. Yet those who hold power and privilege as a group
must work to defend the victims of racism. White Americans need to take the cause
and make it their central goal to defeat it or it will take much longer. I believe
and strongly so, if we can seize the attention of the American people via
race relations summits sponsored by our Democratic party and the WH we can
begin to shift the responsibility where it belongs...away from the victims and back
to the perpetrators of racism.

I say this as a white guy..we must be vigilant and push back together, but never
overlook the power we hold to this very day.