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Here's Why I Take A Knee

From the front of the room, the professor -- who was black -- sarcastically said, “So, now I should feel bad for you, poor little white girl?”

From the front of the room, the professor -- who was black -- sarcastically said, “So, now I should feel bad for you, poor little white girl?”

I felt the heat spread from the top of my head throughout my body. Her remark was in response to a statement I made when she asked, “How did you feel reading the poem, ‘What I want my white friends to know about being black?’” I said “ashamed.”  Hence the slap!

My first thought was, “(Bleep) this, I’m outta here!” Then I paused; I had an epiphany: “She took a chance on me. She smashed my narrow window of safe theories about racism.”

Her remark cut, but it changed my relationship to race and my own white privilege.

At birth, our whiteness gives us a “get out of jail free” card called privilege. Recent events involving the President confirm my belief; only white people can end racism. 

In Germany, every child is required to visit a concentration camp so they understand what privilege creates. In contrast, Americans adorn streets with tributes to people who supported slavery and the torture and death of black African people in southern concentration camps.

I take a knee every night asking for the courage to suspend the privilege of my whiteness. I take a knee every night praying for justice, mercy, and love. I will continue to take a knee every night   until people of color no longer have to kneel at the altar of my white privilege.

I’m Lou Ness, and that’s my perspective.

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