Some thoughts on why people like me should care.

1. As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Though the phrase has become stale and cliche, it remains true. Without learning the lessons of how our nation has failed, we have no hope to succeed in the future.

2. Some will say, “If I’m white, why should I care? Black history is important, sure, but it’s not my history.” But many whites fail to see the full significance of what the civil rights movement accomplished. It made major steps in freeing African-Americans from the systemic evil of racism; but it did more than that. Societal systems of injustice not only victimize the oppressed but also dehumanize the oppressors, forcing them into a role that no human being was ever meant to have. The civil rights movement helped change this. In religious terms, the movement not only helped save blacks from the injustice of oppression, but also helped redeem whites from the sin of being oppressors. Every non-racist Caucasian in the American south thus owes a debt of gratitude.

3. Some will still say, “Sure, maybe I as a white person owe the civil rights movement my thanks. But I’m a teenager. I’m not racist, I didn’t help create oppression, I wasn’t there, I had nothing to do with it at all. Why do we have to focus on it?” This is true. We weren’t there. We didn’t have anything to do with what already happened. But we do have something to do with what happens today. And the sad reality is that racism, like it or not, is far from over in America. It is much, much easier to be white than to be black in America. White people, even those of us who aren’t racist, who had nothing to do with racism, continue to benefit from what sociologists call “white privilege.” We have it easier, not for anything we’ve done (or not done), but just because of who are parents are and who we are. And that is wrong. It’s not our fault, to be sure — it’s systemic, not individual. But if we don’t acknowledge it, if we don’t learn about it and about its history, there is no hope that we as individuals can ever foster the kind of systemic, societal change necessary to establish true equality. It’s not a matter of “feeling guilty”; it’s a matter of recognizing facts that, while not our fault, are within our capability to alter.

Social transformation starts with you and me, and it must start with knowledge of history.

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