Bronwyn Harris, Author

I am nervous basically every time a person of color tells me they have read or will read my book . That's not fair, of course, as that kind of generalization is never fair, but I am aware enough of my white privilege to know that it probably comes out in my book at some point, as hard as I tried to be aware. Because white privilege is that ingrained. I was very careful in my book, asking former students and Black and Latino/a friends if certain phrases were acceptable, and having these same friends read chapters or read the whole book. I did my best, and I took suggestions and criticism. But here's the thing. I'm white*, and the world looks different with privilege. No matter how aware I am, I'm still going to stumble. And that hurts people. And that is really uncomfortable to face. I was recently called out on something I had said that had an unintended but real impact on a Facebok friend who is a person of color. I'm not going to share any details, becaus

I was going to write a really thoughtful, well-reasoned response to the story of t he mob of teenagers who robbed people on BART , but then I started seeing the reactions. The knee-jerk, racist, totally devoid of caring reactions. So this is what I came up with. I posted it to a local Facebook group where it got deleted eventually. Possibly because I called out another local Facebook group that was advocating murdering the kids. I'd say enjoy, but, well.... ------- http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/diaz/article/BART-attack-brings-out-racist-responses-11108000.php No surprise here, seeing how some of the other local FB groups are advocating blowing the heads off of these kids" but I want us to think about our knee-jerk reactions. I have worked with "these kids" for years (and by "these kids" I ran nothing more or less than the kids in this particular neighborhood) and I want to point out a few things: 1. All kids in East Oakland aren't black. 2.