Seth Godin: Without ambiguity: Black Lives Matter

Seth Godin writes that Without ambiguity: Black Lives Matter.

The systemic, cruel and depersonalizing history of Black subjugation in my county has and continues to be a crime against humanity. It’s based on a desire to maintain power and false assumptions about how the world works and how it can work. It’s been amplified by systems that were often put in place with mal-intent, or sometimes simply because they felt expedient. It’s painful to look at and far more painful to be part of or to admit that exists in the things that we build.

We can’t permit the murder of people because of the color of their skin. Institutional racism is real, it’s often invisible, and it’s pernicious.

And White Supremacy is a loaded term precisely because the systems and their terrible effects are very real, widespread and run deep.

Emphasis Mine

Godin is offering white people a way out by saying that people today did not create the institutional racism. And, as such, white people should have no guilt in tearing this system of instutional racism.

This reflects current Liberal thinking. In a similar vein, slavery could not be abolished until the founders of the slave trade were safely dead.

However, they forget that all systems have to be recreated on a daily basis. Systems are not autonomous from the people that maintain and benefit from them.

It is this continual maintainance and regeneration makes systems vulnerable to change and destruction. Once enough people refuse to maintain the system, the system begins to die.

When a system dies, it is dangerous as those who depend on the system for their identity and sustenance lash out in fury.