White privilege -a ‘recovery’ group
From an Alabama jail, Martin Luther King wrote; “I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate … Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” (published in Liberation Magazine, June 1963)
In the light of that and following the consciousness-raising of the summer’s BLM protests, we, in the Martin Luther King Peace Committee in the two Universities in Newcastle are looking to set up a kind of recovery group (as if from addiction) for white privilege. The first and main task of the group(s) would be to nurture conversations to learn together about privilege and our share in it in order to learn to be better allies to those who suffer from the systemic racism of our society. The group will take seriously what Reni Eddo-Lodge says, “The perverse thing about our current racial structure is that it has always fallen on the shoulders of those at the bottom to change it. Yet racism is… a problem in the psyche of whiteness that white people must take responsibility to solve. You can only do so much from the outside.” (P146, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.)
We’d initially meet to discuss how we would best proceed, then we’d learn from books, videos, podcasts etc so that we could work out how to live, develop better perspectives and be better allies to people of colour in the struggles they face.
If you would like to be part of a group doing this, please contact. andii.bowsher@northumbria.ac.uk
*Disclaimer: This is from The Newcastle Universities MLK Peace Committee, the views outlined above do not necessarily represent the views of our richly diverse and welcoming faith community although we do acknowledge there are issues in some areas of our country/world. If you have been personally affected by any of the issues or feel that you would like further information please contact the email address above or visit our Safeguarding page.