I know that it is right after Thanksgiving, so if I wanted to have a racial discussion it should have been based on the Quakers and the 1st World Peoples (aka Native Americans). But instead, I would like to talk about a moment in my “Sociology of Race and Racism” class at Temple.
We were studying how Whiteness evolved in the United States and had been advised to pay attention because we would have to write a paper on the subject. As I was listening to the material and beginning to form a central idea for my paper, it hit me. The central idea became “the wealthy will never willingly give their wealth to the poor.” The reality of that statement in my head, in my class, filled my insides with a deep depression. One of the other White students in the class (who seemed flustered) asked the teacher, “Don’t you think that this generation of young White people will get tired of the way things are and try to change it?” I raised my hand and responded, “No, because they live comfortably and in order to change things they would have to be willing to change their lives and there simply are not enough young White people willing to change their lives in order to make a dramatic change in the U.S.” Immediately after making the statement, I turned around and I was filled with a deep sense of “gratitude” as a thought pierced the darkness and overpowered it with its brilliance. The piercing thought was “…there aren’t enough, but I know many…my friends at the Circle of Hope…it is not enough to give me hope for change in our government or in our world, but it is enough to give me hope for my neighbors, my neighborhood, and even this city.” And so, may I say plainly, I am truly and deeply thankful for your willingness to suffer and work towards transformation when the World says that you don’t have to.