Eric Dyson: Blackface Scandals Show ‘Vast Reaches of Ignorance’ White People Have

EXCERPT:

DYSON: "It's not a matter of — look. If you -- if you are in that culture, whether you are a professor or a student, whether you are older or younger, if you participate in the unconscious bias and in the explicit white supremacist logic that fuels it, you’re not going to not see a problem with that. The question is, do black people continue to be the agenda and the learning item of a dominant white culture? Are we constantly having a learning moment at the expense of black people? Now I think Ms. Maxwell hit it right on the head. The question is not whether or not blackface is correct or appropriate. It is not. It is a scandalous assault and mockery of black people. It’s a caricature, a dehumanizing one as she’s indicated of black people. But the consequences of that are different. So that this shows the vast reaches of ignorance. The magnitude of unconsciousness that many white people have and are allowed to have. So when we talk about white privilege, count this as one. When people say, 'I don’t understand it.' The fact you don’t have to know about blackface. The fact that you don’t have to know the consequences of racial intolerance are -- are -- are indicative of a serious kind of white privilege that we need to attack. So, we got to do both and, not either/or.”