In the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin, several commentators wrote artful letters to their black sons, warning of the reality of racial profiling and discrimination that still haunt us today. Subsequently, an either insanely ignorant or willfully obnoxious National Review columnist (now fired) named John Derbyshire wrote a letter to his two white children, spewing the sort of hateful stereotypes about black people that conservatives often hasten to argue are a part of America’s past, not present. As such, Mr. Derbyshire’s letter has nothing to do with actual black folks, but is a revealing warning about a certain subset of mostly white, mostly male conservatives who like to believe that racism and related injustices are merely myths concocted to disadvantage white people. I’d like to explain to my daughter, who is white, why this is a load of bullshit.
Read my full response at Colorlines and please, spread it around.
Lately, I’ve found myself having to explain why Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” is dramatically different from women themselves using the term in so-called “Slut Walks”. Somewhere between the complex answer of a dissertation on Critical Race Theory and the overly simple response of a one-fingered salute is the following:
You can download this PDF here.
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