There have been social media campaigns to get people to read more books by African-Americans about their history and their sociology. Most of the suggested books are by far-left authors, giving the impression that only the far-left have something important to say about African-American life.
I've been collecting and reading books by African-Americans way before the current news cycle, and it does a disservice to pretend they all have the same perspective on their situation. In my book collection, I have books by Larry Elder, Al Sharpton, Charles Barkley, and Clarence Page. Their views are very different from each other and it would be a very lively debate if they were all in the same room together.
Though to be fair, I could do more to diversify the genders in my collection, though I did borrow a book by Star Parker, who is an African-American socially conservative author whose books obviously wouldn't have been recommended by the radical left doing the current round of social media campaigns. Left-leaning writers like Melissa Harris-Perry, Roxanne Gay, and Cynthia Tucker have also written great articles too, so it's not like I'm telling people to only read conservative or liberal authors.
While it is great to have social media campaigns to get people to understand racial oppression, what isn't great is those social media campaigns that have more to do with "shame whitey" as if all those with pure European ancestries are biologically programmed to oppress.
Terry Crews got heat for speaking out against the "hate whitey" campaigns. The twitter mobs really went after him for even saying
""We must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn't morph into #blacklivesbetter.""
AND
“Defeating White supremacy without White people creates Black supremacy. Equality is the truth. Like it or not, we are in this together,”
But you know who said something really similar to that?
Nelson Mandela!
Back when Mandela was fighting against the apartheid regime in South Africa, he said the following while on trial in 1964
http://db.nelsonmandela.org/speeches/pub_view.asp?pg=item&ItemID=NMS010
I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all people will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, My Lord, if it needs to be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Imagine the response had the Twitter Mobs existed back then. The "woke" SJW pansies would've gone bezerk at Nelson Mandela for "false equivalency" and "centering whiteness" just because he said was against both white domination AND black domination.
After that trial, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for defying the apartheid regime. He was eventually released and become the 1st black president of a newly liberated South Africa. If he really wanted to, he could've been president for life. But Nelson Mandela understood that this wouldn't' be good for South Africa. He chose to be a one-term president so that he could set an example of a peaceful transfer of power after his presidency.
Meanwhile, next door in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe was the leader of who fought against Rhodesia's version of apartheid back in the 1970s. He took power in 1980 and was basically president for life. Correction - dictator for nearly his whole life until he was evicted from the power that he abused for so long. White domination was replaced by black domination, with the police brutality now committed by native Africans instead of European settlers. As if it's supposed to feel better being brutally beaten by someone of your own race.
-----------
Here in Hawaii, we are in a formerly independent nation taken over by a colonial power that celebrates independence from another colonial power on the 4th of July.
"White privilege" is diluted here, in that yes, those of European ancestry tend to have higher average incomes, but most of the government positions are dominated by people of Asian ancestry. In my lifetime, we had a Native Hawaiian governor and a Samoan mayor.
Our education system is dominated by Asians, traditionally Japanese, though I'm now seeing more Filipino teachers now than when I was going to school. But even the Asian domination of schools doesn't mean there aren't biases against more marginalized groups. Just in the past 18 months, I informed a school administration and the DOE Civil Rights Office that 2 staff members (who happened to be of Asian ancestries) have made multiple negative comments about Micronesians. I felt this was important to report because how would it feel to be a student to have staff members express such prejudice towards your ethnicity. One of the staff members confronted me with "don't tell on me to the office", which led to me telling on her to the office a 2nd time. The other staff member filed a TRO petition against me filled with exaggerations about my imperfections. The TRO has since been voided. I was going to practice social distance from that person regardless.
But the "woke" think I should feel better that this retaliation isn't coming from Europeans in power?
As for the police here, the state of Hawaii finally passed stricter accountability standards for law enforcement officers.
And today, a Honolulu police officer was convicted for forcing a homeless man to lick a urinal.
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/07/15/breaking-news/former-honolulu-officer-sentenced-to-4-years-for-making-man-lick-urinal/
as I mentioned in today's Facebook post
HPD and SHOPO say that police shouldn't be accountable to higher standards by claiming "this isn't the mainland". So what? As if the homeless person forced by a HPD officer to lick a urinal is supposed to feel better about "this isn't the mainland"?
The only thing different here is more of the officers are of non-European ancestries, and therefore will not get the scrutiny given to European-American officers.
And for those "woke" so-called "justice" warriors who claim "non-whites can't be racists because non-whites don't have institutional power", as the article noted, the abusive police officer in this case is Filipino, the homeless man in this case was European-American.
Don't matter what race the abusive officer and the victim is, except to point out that non-Europeans can have and abuse institutional power, and Europeans can also be the victims of abusive powerful people.
Life here is more complicated than "white man always bad, non-white always innocent victim"
And one more thing, Megan Kau is the attorney defending the abusive police officer, also happens to be running for Honolulu prosecutor, and she's all about "the law is the law and you must follow the law", yet it doesn't apply to people paid to enforce the laws
