Why liberal white women pay a lot of money to learn over dinner how they're racist

[friendly_iconoclast]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/race-to-dinner-party-racism-women

Freshly made pasta is drying on the wooden bannisters lining the hall of a beautiful home in Denver, Colorado. Fox-hunting photos decorate the walls in a room full of books. A fire is burning. And downstairs, a group of liberal white women have gathered around a long wooden table to admit how racist they are.

“Recently, I have been driving around, seeing a black person, and having an assumption that they are up to no good,” says Alison Gubser. “Immediately after I am like, that’s no good! This is a human, just doing their thing. Why do I think that?”

This is Race to Dinner. A white woman volunteers to host a dinner in her home for seven other white women – often strangers, perhaps acquaintances. (Each dinner costs $2,500, which can be covered by a generous host or divided among guests.) A frank discussion is led by co-founders Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who identifies as Indian American. They started Race to Dinner to challenge liberal white women to accept their racism, however subconscious. “If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”

Rao and Jackson believe white, liberal women are the most receptive audience because they are open to changing their behavior. They don’t bother with the 53% of white women who voted for Trump. White men, they feel, are similarly a lost cause. “White men are never going to change anything. If they were, they would have done it by now,” Jackson says.

[58Sunliner]

1. 53% of white women didn't vote for the orange ass. Not even 53% of white women who voted.

26.% of eligible voters who voted, chose DT. Most of them were men. So at most @10 to 13% of all eligible women voters, voted for DT. And they were not all white. Some Latin, Asian, and Indian women also voted for DT. If the votes were accurate.

[Skittles]

2. seeing a black person and assuming they are up to no good

honey, you don't need a $2500 dinner to know that you're a racist asshole

[friendly_iconoclast]

3. Buying 'racism indulgences' is apparently a thing with the performatively woke

Jackson and Rao weren't the first with the idea that one can shop their way out of racism:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/01/guilty-white-liberals-are-purchasing-racial-indulgences.html

Guilty White Liberals Are Purchasing Racial Indulgences

It’s a fairly paralyzing time to be a guilty white American liberal. With Donald Trump elected on the basis of one of the race-baitiest presidential campaigns in modern American history, Republicans firmly in power, and mounting evidence that progress toward racial equality has been stalled out for years if not decades, it feels like there’s little chance of substantive progress anytime soon. What can the conscientious white ally do?

One answer, according to a recent Vice News Tonight segment: Spend between $25 and $100 a month to receive a box that helps you be a better ally. That’s the business plan set up by Grand Rapids, Michigan entrepreneurs Marissa Johnson and Leslie Mac, at least. Every month, they send their subscribers the Safety Pin Box, which Vice reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro describes as being “designed to wake up white people to the realities of being black in America.”...

...That said, the Safety Pin Box is a very interesting glimpse at a certain strain of woke white slacktivism. This is a form of slacktivism which holds that if only privileged white people were better educated and more conscious of their own privilege, racial progress would ensue — in many senses, it puts liberal, privileged white people and their own inner battles at the center of the struggle. This form of slacktivism doesn’t, as a rule, talk all that much about power structures or even power, really, except at the level of individual privilege.

In a certain sense, it’s a form of slacktivism perfectly constructed for an age in which politics feel futile, inequality is rampant, the prospects for meaningful redistribution are moribund, and a lot of liberal white people who are the winners in the winner-take-all economy are performatively conscious of racism, but also not all that into the idea of living in truly integrated neighborhoods, or sending their kids to truly integrated schools. This form of slacktivism allows white people who live in wealthy enclaves of Brooklyn, technically surrounded by black people in every direction but thoroughly disconnected from them sociologically, to feel like part of a broader struggle — and to broadcast their enthusiasm about that struggle — without actually giving up anything much materially. It’s all very consumer-friendly.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bjdw85/white-people-are-paying-this-business-to-get-rid-of-their-white-guilt

White people are paying this business to get rid of their white guilt


When organizers Marissa Johnson and Leslie Mac saw white people pinning safety pins to their lapels after the election, they thought it was stupid — but they smelled a business opportunity.

The safety pin is the Make America Great Again hat for white people who didn’t vote for Trump and want everyone to know it. Wearers say they’re showing people of color they’re “safe” white people. In the eyes of Johnson and Mac, the pin is an empty gesture. It’s white people making themselves feel better without actually doing anything of substance, they say.

Their solution: the Safety Pin Box, a monthly subscription service modeled on services like Birchbox. For $100 a month, subscribers get a box of tasks to complete that are aimed at making them more woke. Johnson and Mac pocket some of the profits, and give some money away to black women activists.

Evan McMorris-Santoro talked to the founders of the company about their controversial business model, and to one of the customers who is wholeheartedly on board.

They had a YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl74tQzgrMJGYoVoxwQDD4Q

You could even buy an 'ally backpack' to give to a friend:

Safety Pin Box went under in 2018:

http://www.lesliemac.com/updates/2018/5/1/leslie-mac-statement-regarding-safety-pin-box

It is with a heavy heart that I am announcing the dissolution of Safety Pin Box (SPB) and the business partnership between Marissa Jenae Johnson and me.

For 18 months, SPB has operated as a entity with purpose—the most significant of which was to give back to Black Women. Our little box sparked many a conversation about monetary support for organizers on the front lines doing the hard work of building a better world.

I remain committed to doing this work and supporting Black women, above all else. Unfortunately, being involved with SPB is no longer a positive or safe way for me to do that due to both personal and professional irreconcilable differences between Marissa and me...