Interesting that Steve wrote this article and now this one shows up on the FdB substack in the same week: freddiedeboer.substack.… He makes the point that if you empower people, then toxic attitudes from others won't have as much power to hurt them. If you are an empowered person and believe in yourself, it's much harder to move you off your center.

“My basic gloss on racial inequality has been the same for forever: it’s futile to try and get everyone to not be interpersonally racist, but we can economically empower Black people and other people of color such that interpersonal racism no longer has the power to hurt them.”

His argument is that if you focus on class-first with regard to policy making, that this focus includes race and will empower black people such that interpersonal racism loses its ability to cause so much harm. But, if you focus on race-first policies, then you divide people into competing groups and as we have seen over at least the past 5 years or more, nothing practical gets accomplished and very few people are helped.

This is the world I wish to work toward. Here's hoping…