Thread by @AlsoACarpenter

As we celebrate #Juneteenth, I think we should consider this warning from @dribram:

A thread:

“Racial reformers have customarily requested or demanded that Americans, particularly White Americans, sacrifice their own privileges for the betterment of Black people. 1/

2/ And yet, this strategy is based on one of the oldest myths of the modern era, a myth continuously produced and reproduced by racists and antiracists alike: that racism materially benefits the majority of White people, that White people would lose and not gain in the ...

3/ ...reconstruction of an antiracist America.”

For example, though there was much sacrifice of life and blood spent by White Americans both for and against the “Peculiar Institution” of the South during the Civil War, we ought never think of the end of the institution ...

4/ ... itself as either a sign of “self-sacrifice” from Northerners, nor a “loss”—in any sense of the word—to Southerners.

“It is not coincidental that slavery kept the vast majority of southern Whites poor" (@DrIbram).

5/ Nor should we see the end of explicit, legal, Jim Crow as either a “sacrifice” on the part of White Americans on behalf of Black Americans, nor a loss—in any sense of the word—to any Americans.

6/ Nor should we believe today that White Americans are, or need to, “sacrifice” privilege on behalf of Black Americans. Why? Because it is simply NOT A REAL SACRIFICE to end the systems that cycle Americans through generational poverty, broken schools, prisons, and repeat.

7/ It is manifestly a society-wide aggrandizement to seek justice and equity. It benefits all Americans to work against discrimination, prejudice, hatred, and the de facto segregation of neighborhoods and churches.

8/ All Americans benefit some 10, some 100, some 1,000 fold from consistent application of “love thy neighbor as thyself,” both between neighbor and neighbor, and also socially, culturally, economically, and politically.

9/ If your eschatology tells you this is just a pipe dream until the coming of our Lord, it nevertheless doesn’t change the fact that it is required and has been and will continue to be eschatologically realized in time, even if only a tiny foretaste of what is to come, viz., ...

10/ ... “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” The Church, in fact, is to be this very foretaste.

11/11 But, to conclude, we must never seek this justice thinking that it is now, or has ever been, White “sacrifice” for Black benefit.

It’s really pretty racist, if you think about it.