{"id":3025,"date":"2006-12-19T01:03:51","date_gmt":"2006-12-19T08:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/12\/19\/its-not-about-intentions\/"},"modified":"2006-12-19T01:03:51","modified_gmt":"2006-12-19T08:03:51","slug":"its-not-about-intentions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3025","title":{"rendered":"It's not about intentions."},"content":{"rendered":"

In a brief exchange about a prominent liberal blogger’s use of blackface, Maha <\/a> — a blogger I have a lot of respect for — writes:<\/p>\n

And I still say the intention of Billmon\u2019s post had nothing to do with racism, and if you can\u2019t see that then it went over your head. I\u2019m sorry if you take that as condescension, but it\u2019s a fact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I see this happen a lot in discussions between black and white progressives — not universally, but very, very frequently. The black progressive wants to talk about what happened and why it was wrong, while the white progressive wants to talk about what good intentions <\/em>white progressives had.<\/p>\n

Here, the pattern repeats again. But there’s no reason to make Billmon’s intentions <\/em>the subject at all. Billmon isn’t on trial, and it’s not about his guilt or innocence. Talking about racism as if the issue to be determined is the purity of white people’s intentions is, frankly, a characteristically white way to frame discussions of racism. And it’s a mistake.<\/p>\n

Racism is bad because it hurts people who are discriminated against. Let’s keep an eye on that, and not worry so much about the state of White people’s souls. Okay?<\/p>\n

(There’s much more to be said, but Ebogjonson <\/a>already said it very well.).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a brief exchange about a prominent liberal blogger’s use of blackface, Maha — a blogger I have a lot of respect for — writes: And I still say the intention of Billmon\u2019s post had nothing to do with racism, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}