In an otherwise excellent post, I think this suggestion:

Can we really break free from the racialization of bodies, especially given we’re deeply immersed in it?

We can, but it will take the full effort of everyone, especially those that benefit the most, to disrupt and completely dismantle the system.

warrants more scrutiny.

First, it may be that this is exactly right: the only achievable solution is to enlist those who benefit the most to disrupt and dismantle the system.

But if I read the current trends correctly, the apparent “time-travel back to the days of Jim Crow” is almost entirely being driven by opposition to the disruption, not to the ideal of, and gradual moves towards, greater structural equality. Yes, there are a few really hardcore racists; but there are rather a lot of pretty anemic sorta-racists; why would we want the latter, who can be moved, to be allied with the former, who are deeply awful?

Maybe what we need is not disruption, which invites opposition; humans are absolutely brilliant at banding together to combat a (perceived) common threat.

Maybe we need a sense of fierce determination to seek a just and empowering society but also the patience to get there step by step, not to break everything and start all over again. To get there together, as much as possible.

Maybe we don’t need to be talking about “white privilege” when asking that everyone’s basic human rights are respected. Privilege makes it sound like only the elite are deserving of it, and therefore both antagonizes those who are very much not elite, and implicitly normalizes the lack of rights. Why not instead say: this is unjust, this is inhumane, this is wrong; we should be ashamed, because we are better than this!

Maybe we don’t want to raise a huge fuss about cultural appropriation while simultaneously asking that people not display cultural biases. It sends such a bizarre message on the face of it, even if there’s a more nuanced view where it makes somewhat more sense.

Sometimes I wonder whether people really want things to be better, or whether they want to feel like they’re fighting a righteous fight, and will sabotage even the gains that we have now in order to obtain that feeling.

Making enemies (or friends) on the basis of race is all too easy. Avoiding the path that this takes us down is perhaps our greatest challenge, even greater than any of the structural barriers to equality in the U.S.. Humans have, after all, been warring with each other for millenia on the basis of far smaller changes than the ones we’re trying to supercede now; and the barriers in the past were far taller than those that remain now, and we’ve made great progress.