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White Outrage isn't Enough!

It is admirable the white response to the Black Lives Matter protests, it has been very heartening to see how strongly the issue has been taken up by all peoples of conscience.

But anger, outrage and marching is not going to be enough to rectify this entrenched problem that humans have created. To really defeat this issue, we need to firstly economically empower the communities that have been deprived because of their race, and then we need to balance the existing disparity of wealth.

The first problem is achievable, and I feel that the current momentum of the protests may get us someway towards that. Economic empowerment can be somewhat addressed with education and educational grants, and also with socio-financial education to help to change deprived communities' spending habits. But rectifying economic disparity - just hold on a minute.

That means that some of the better-off "Haves" are going to need to give up something. To sacrifice some of their well-being. To, God-forbid, reduce their standard of living.....

This has been the stumbling block of so many well-intentioned civil-rights movements - where they get to the point where their demands mean that those in power or positions of privilege need to give up something, or undergo some suffering themselves.

In Venezuela - its been the thing that has unhinged Chavez's humanely intentioned reforms. In South Africa (where I happen to have  originated in a skin that was entitled to unearned privilege), the white community continually complains of the country having gone to the dogs since the ANC came into power. Its so hard for the privileged to see past their own small reductions in living standards to see how the standards of those more needy might be being raised.

Wealth redistribution is a knotty issue. It's one that fills capitalist boots with dread and the kind of fear that fuels "reds under the beds" witch-hunts. Without entire systems change, its not something that I believe can be achievable - wealth disparity and exploitation of the poor and deprived is too hard-coded into the profit-centred paradigm we find ourselves in.

Yes we need everyone with a moral compass to push, push and push some more, and we need to understand the need to push for bottom-to-top economic reform too. We need a new system that will give everyone's life dignity and meaning. There can be no racial emancipation without economic emancipation.