Words from an interviewee:
I'm part of an organization that's going through a lot of unconscious bias training, cultural sensitivity training, all of the trainings that are somehow supposed to train racism out of you. And we talk so politely in those meetings and the people who are doing a lot of the learning are completely silent. I would love to hear the truth of what they're thinking. I don't think we can get to a place of a society without racism until we're willing to accept radical truth.
A truth that I would like to be expressed is it's ok that you're racist, you haven't known anything else. But now, the goal is to see how you can be less racist.... to be able to call out racism plainly and without it being such a nasty word like, "you are friendly, you are also racist." I would like the freedom to say that without the massive amount of defensiveness and without the fear... I would want the awareness and the willingness to work on it without any hard feelings.
I see hope in Gen Z people. I see hope in a generation that is making change in regards to
the gender spectrum. Never in a million zillion years did I think something as basic as gender could experience this kind of shift in our understanding. But it's happening which makes me think these impossible things which cannot change indeed can change and it's because this generation said, "my pronouns are...." If they can change something as basic as that... they give me hope that something as endemic, built in, cooked in as racism could also change. They started with gender, and I hope they continue to question other systems we accepted for centuries, one of those systems being racism.
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