Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.

[kpete]

The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know. Your knowledge of black life, of the hardships we face, yes, those we sometimes create, those we most often endure, don’t concern you much. You think we have been handed everything because we have fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it — all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace — should be yours first, and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.

So you demand the Supreme Court give you back what was taken from you: more space in college classrooms that you dominate; better access to jobs in fire departments and police forces that you control. All the while your resentment builds, and your slow hate gathers steam. Your whiteness has become a burden too heavy for you to carry, so you outsource it to a vile political figure who amplifies your most detestable private thoughts.

Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.

If you do not know us, you also refuse to hear us because you do not believe what we say. You have decided that enough is enough. If the cops must kill us for no good reason, then so be it because most of us are guilty anyway. If the black person that they kill turns out to be innocent, it is an acceptable death, a sacrificial one.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/what-white-america-fails-to-see.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&referer=http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1546424

[TCJ70]

1. Sweeping generalizations are wrong no matter who they're directed at...

...but there are many people who do ignore the problem of police violence.

[Loki Liesmith]

2. Poorly written nonsense

[BumRushDaShow]

3. He appears to have written this

with an eye on being a "messenger" (second person style) of a particular point of view that is raging out there right now. Essentially creating a manifesto as the editorial. A bit different from his regular prose style.

Anyone taking this personally should step back and consider this as someone attempting to personify "rage in a community".

[Igel]

4. Too general.

Had black twins a couple of years ago in class. One had an activist friend.

The friend had an athletics scholarship, but was a "man." He wasn't going to be told to be quiet I class, do his work, ask to piss he had his dignity.

Convinced his friend if the same.

The other twin said they were treated like everybody else and to stuff it.

In the end, the "man" was two weeks from failing for the year and was told if he failed his scholarship would go poof! He quietly, to preserve his "dignity", made up all the work.

The one twin felt betrayed when he failed but his activist friend passes the second twin simply passed.

The twins' mother "didn't" understand. She worked for a school and was shocked by the number of chances her failed son had been given.

Some things are discrimination. Some are simple circumstance. Some are choice. Piling it all under "discrimination" is simplistic and fails to assign responsibility. Now, for many that just means blame. But if you cannot name all of the problem you cannot fix it. Blaming teacher discrimination for that kid's F says he's okay and not in need of an attitude adjustment. It won't fix what he can fix, but tells others to make special allowance that his mother, brother, and even peer thought unreasonable.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. No "is". Correlation is not causation.

The fact that many many whites are blind to race and racism is not evidence that whiteness causes racism.

Please, do not fight bigotry and prejudice with bigotry and prejudice by pre-judging all white people. If it is not acceptable to prejudge black people it is not acceptable to prejudge white people or people of any color.

[kiva]

6. This is the sort of generalization

that fed the Dallas shooter - all whites bad, kill them. Same as 'all blacks bad', must shoot before they do that's led to so many killings of black men by cops.

[jtuck004]

7. The comments are starting to bolster the meat of the writer's argument.

Regardless, that last paragraph has the line...

"You cannot know how we secretly curse the cowardice of whites who know what I write is true, but dare not say it. Neither will your smug insistence that you are different — not like that ocean of unenlightened whites — satisfy us any longer. It makes the killings worse to know that your disapproval of them has spared your reputations and not our lives."

Straight up.

[whatthehey]

12. Speaking of meaningless tautologies

Strip away any racial subtext and consider that claim.

The killing of anything, or anybody, can never spare the lives of the things/people killed. If disapproving of it, such as almost all people disapprove of all murders, makes one appear better person, it simply means this disapproval is the most widely held opinion. The opposite of this subclause is possible. Outside Jains, people who disapprove of killing ants in their own kitchen are generally considered to have weird rather than good reputations.

In affect this sentence says, correctly, that most people expect others to disapprove of murders, and that dead people stay dead. Two true statements, but the only thing they say about racism is that we are not quite so racist a society as to assume general approbation of killing black people. Yay for us.

[Dr Rise]

8. I understood it perfectly

[smirkymonkey]

9. K&R

[Democat]

10. Divide and conquer

That is the intent of many on the far right.

[Dreamer Tatum]

11. These articles are like what cod liver oil was in the 20's

Someone jamming it down your throat because they were sure you needed it, and it turns out to be worthless if not harmful.

[MisterP]

13. this is a rather curious response to a mass murderer inspired by an antisemitic

hate cult whose goal was to have BLM crushed and a thousand more Philando Castiles