A reminder...if you try and fight racism in total isolation to everything else...
...without dealing with the way this very system is structured...
...you always end up losing the battle in the end, even if you get some victories in the short run...
MLK realized that in 1966(and it was his inclusion of broader structural issues that led the system to decide he needed to die).
Capitalists and militarists NEED people to be racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and bigoted in every other way.
And they need even wealthy POC to be made to feel that, despite their personal success, they aren't really on the same level of everybody else who has done well financially for themselves. That's why Oprah gets hassled in boutiques and Chris Rock gets repeatedly busted for DWB. It's why Eartha Kitt was treated worse by the system in the 1960's than any white celebrity that came out against staying in Vietnam. It's the capitalism and the militarism that's doing that.
Unless we at least change our economic system to take it away from total corporate control, and our foreign policy away from war as the perpetual default model of global problem-solving)we can never really defeat it at the grassroots level(because the existing order in this country needs to keep hate alive to keep people from uniting against it) and at the institutional level(because differing treatment of people by group is how the system enforces its power from above.
Never put anything before the fight against bigotry...call out hatred wherever it exists...fight hard for whatever partial victories we might get over social injustice in the short run(and those victories are important)...but remember that bigotry is a poisonous weed, and can only be eradicated by ripping out its roots from below, not by just pulling off leaves and stalks above ground level.
We can only live a hate-free life by changing the nature of that life.
Let's unite for the defeat of all hatred, division, and fear.
Let's rip out all the roots, so the weeds stop growing back.
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