You know, because all white people are so ignorant.

Via WaPo:

Since the riots in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, comments on social media and in my inbox have revealed a powerful subtext in this country. We rarely speak it, but if met head-on, we could establish a lingua franca for creative conversations, or just better informed ones, about race.

At least that’s what I hope.

It begins, for me, with an open secret. Something black folks often whisper, and I speak now with as much gentleness as I can muster:

It can be exhausting trying to bring white people up to a basic racial literacy.

Many don’t even know what they don’t know about privilege and history, and often either don’t take responsibility for their own education or expect you to educate them.

And I wish there were a racial primer out there somewhere — mandatory reading — with five or 10 basic facts about housing, education, criminal justice and employment. Or maybe a simple overview so that before we enter into meaningful conversations around issues that are front and center before our nation, I don’t have to go person to person trying to convince a large population of citizenry that the world isn’t flat.

It’s part of what feels like an ahistoric privilege some whites sometimes exercise. They treat foundational stories of how they’ve amassed wealth and power as pre-political, ignoring the violent, deeply discriminatory sides of the balance sheet. They see their experiences as normative, and anything else a deviation.

During the riots, someone I deeply respect posted that she understood the peaceful protests but decried the looting as simple “I GOT MINE.” (As in televisions, diapers, bottles of water.)

I was this close to responding: Do you know what’s also an example of “I GOT MINE”? Gentrification. (As in houses, neighborhoods, cities.) It’s “I got my apartment because I can afford the rent and you no longer can, no matter how long you’ve lived here.” Or “I got my house because my parents (grandparents, et al.) helped with the down payment because they bought their first house in, say, Chevy Chase, for a song and sold it for quadruple, while blacks either couldn’t get financing or were kept out through restrictive covenants or customs.” Gentrification doesn’t know, or question, that Georgetown used to be half black, or ponder the fate of its former residents, because it is absolutely “I GOT MINE.” And by the way, do you like my granite countertops?