TO THE EDITOR

“White Supremacy”.

Check your pulse. Did it go up? Many Answer, “I’m not racist.”

Many say things like, “I don’t make racist jokes... I believe that we are all equal... I have Black friends... Why do people keep calling white people racist?”

Who said racism was about your individual expression?

Racism is a system. One built on the backs of slave labor only a couple hundred years ago. A system that can be traced through Jim Crow, voter ID laws, and misquoting MLK in order to quell any civil “unrest”. It’s about a system that smashed people of colors’ heads onto the concrete - justified by policing policies more focused on making a profit and maintaining a white culture status quo then protecting the rights of all human beings. To be a racist is to be a person who does not have to pursue change in order to live a life unaffected by a problematic, systemic foe. Therefore, a person for whom the system does not work, cannot be a racist.

Now, everyone can be outwardly prejudiced. Everyone can be inwardly biased. We can all be hurtful. But no person of color is, or can ever be as long as this system continues to operate in its present state, racist. There is no “double-standard” here.

The fact is that as a white person in America, I have been given a hereditary disease. I did not choose it. I do not want it but the doctor has confirmed it and I must therefore accept that it is not just a disease of my ancestors - that way of thinking is a luxury of the past. I must fight it for it is also in me. I must take action. Accepting and doing nothing ensures it is passed along.

Brody Hed

Becker, MN