Thread by @timjacobwise

1/ Critics of anti-racist curriculum say educators are trying to make whites feel guilt or shame. But this is nonsense. Encouraging social responsibility is not the same as promoting racial guilt. We often take responsibility for things even when we aren't to blame for them

2/ We take responsibility for breaking cycles of dysfunction in our families, even though we didn't set those cycles in motion but merely became the inheritors of them...We take responsibility for cleaning up pollution even if we didn't dump the toxic waste ourselves...

3/ If you became CEO of a company that had taken out bad loans you would have to cover those debts (well, barring some legal chicanery) even though you weren't responsible for them...that would be the morally proper thing to do, owing nothing to personal guilt on your part...

4/ The same is true with anti-racism. It's about taking responsibility for the world as we've found it, not because we made it, but because it's ours.

timjwise.medium.com/70da545e1077?s…