The Cleveland Guardians? Yes, It's Official

[gawaintheknight]

Just to clarify: when someone says that white people are racist, it doesn't mean that all white people actively hate minorities or burn crosses or murder people in a black church or fly a Confederate flag. I think that there are two points to be made: one is that white people have prejudices, which they may not even recognize, because everyone does, whatever race they identify as. The difference is that white people have privilege and power that other races don't have, and because white people have privilege and power, their prejudices turn into racism and oppression in a way that's not possible for races that don't have privilege and power.

A classic article about white privilege: https://nationalseedproject.org/Key-...sible-knapsack


The second point that I think is important is that not all racism comes from individual racist acts. There's also structural racism. There are a lot of articles about that - here's one specifically aimed at Christians by a conservative Christian, but useful even if you're not a Christian yourself:

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/...t-wokeness-its

Given that structural racism exists, and that white people benefit from it, we (I'm white) have three options. One is to be happy with our privilege and tell ourselves we deserve it. One is to recognize that it's a bad thing, but not do anything to change it. That lets us feel good about ourselves, because we aren't actively doing anything wrong, but it perpetuates the status quo and the existing structural racism, even if we don't personally feel hostility to minorities. And the last one is to actively work against it.

Incidentally, the National Council of American Indians had this to say about the name change:

https://www.ncai.org/news/articles/2...name-guardians

“With today’s announcement, the Cleveland baseball team has taken another important step forward in healing the harms its former mascot long caused Native people, in particular Native youth,” said NCAI President Fawn Sharp. “We call on the other professional sports teams and thousands of schools across the country that still cling to their antiquated Native ‘themed’ mascots to immediately follow suit. NCAI also looks forward to continuing its work with the Cleveland Guardians to help grow the national movement of respect for Tribal Nations, cultures, and communities, a movement that values, teaches, and validates who Native people are today, what makes us unique, the many important contributions we make to this country, and our rightful place in the diverse mosaic that is America.”

I'd be curious to hear from those of you going to the National what percentage of the dealers and what percentage of the attendees there are white and what percentage are women (excluding those who are just there to keep their boyfriend/husband/son happy)....

Ted Clayton