HuffPo Writer: The Feelings of White People Leads to Racial Violence

Writing for the Huffington Post, Amelia Shroyer wants white people to know that their feelings and "fragility" are getting black people killed.

Her article, titled "White Fragility Is Racial Violence," begins by saying, "White people, we are massively failing with our white fragility. When we are asked to do the very least in empathetic listening, we center entire conversations around our own feelings."

Shroyer continues, "As white people living in white supremacy we have the power to take that focus because society values our words more than those of people of color."

Get over your feelings about being called a racist, Shroyer writes, because if you're white, you've done something racist anyway. "The fact is, if you're white in America, you've likely said, thought, or done something racist," she states bluntly. "It's just a fact. We were all brought up in a white supremacist culture."

Stop being afraid of being called a racist and realize that you likely are one, she writes. "By resisting (or even embracing) fear, guilt and shame we can open ourselves up to conversations about race that actually create a deeper understanding," Shroyer adds.

Ms. Shroyer

White people are wantonly killing black people and getting away with it, she goes on. "I don't have to live with the weight of knowing I can be gunned down in the street for no reason and my murderer would get away with it," Shroyer argues. "I don't ever have to contemplate how to prepare my child for a world that will fear, dehumanize and underestimate them. I cannot fathom that. I also cannot imagine carrying the weight of this knowledge only to be asked to educate the same people who resist listening to my reality."

Shroyer then calls on white people to end racism. "White people, we can do better. We can sit with our friends of color and feel our emotions without coopting [sic] their grief."

She then states that white people are still oppressing African Americans, writing, "We can do our own labor to educate ourselves, and find new sources of information to take the burden of our own ignorance off the people we have oppressed for centuries."

Ms. Shroyer ends her article, "We've got to do better. People are dying out here."

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Aurelius

Founder and editor of the Social Memo

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