"Empathy does not preclude accountability:" Jay Smooth on Rachel Dolezal

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

For a long time, I gave white people the benefit of the doubt. I told myself that they didn’t know what they were doing. They were ignorant. If only we explained it to them, helped them relate, then they’d understand. Over the past three years I’ve seen explanation after explanation and still people deny racism. They deny profiling. They deny persecution of Black people. They deny and when they can’t deny, they lie. It was in the past six months that I finally accepted that all of this is 100% deliberate, including the “ignorance.” It is willful. It is a choice.

My denial of this was the only thing that made me feel slightly safe in this world. It was what helped me stay optimistic about the future and aided me in giving white people the benefit of the doubt. I don’t give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. Now I just understand that if they aren’t challenging racism, they support it. I can no longer call my husband’s racism unconscious. It was unchallenged. Now we both live with the challenge of what that means and how he needs to continue to change and grow.

TaLynn Kel, “The Danger Of Unchallenged Racism In Interracial Relationships,” The Establishment, July 18, 2016. http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/07/18/the-danger-of-unchallenged-racism-in-interracial-relationships/.

“Empathy does not preclude accountability:” Jay Smooth on Rachel Dolezal

“Empathy does not preclude accountability:” Jay Smooth on Rachel Dolezal

Fusion
2015-06-18

Jay Smooth

Last night, while I was in the midst of making a video on the Rachel Dolezal situation, the news broke of this horrific racist killing in Charleston South Carolina. After much deliberation we have decided to release the video as scheduled, and I believe its core message is still relevant to the moment. But please know my whole heart is with the people of Charleston, Emanuel AME Church, and everyone affected by this wholly unthinkable yet all too American act of terrorism.

Watch the video here.

Tags: Fusion, Jay Smooth, Rachel A. Dolezal, Rachel Dolezal

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2015 at 20:46Z and is filed under Media Archive, Passing, Social Science, United States, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

“Empathy does not preclude accountability:” Jay Smooth on Rachel Dolezal

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