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“No justice, no peace” is a slogan that emerged from racial justice protests in 1986 after the murder of Michael Griffith in Brooklyn at the hands of a white mob. The slogan is still in use, and necessary, today.
It reminds me of something James Baldwin said on the Dick Cavett Show in response to Yale philosophy professor Paul Weiss asking, essentially, why Baldwin chooses to focus on race rather than commonalities across races. Baldwin’s response is powerful—with systemic racism evident in every institution in America and directly and negatively impacting his life, he cannot ignore race:
You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my life, my woman, my children on some idealism which you assure me exists in America which I have never seen.
So long as Black people are more likely to die from the police, from the healthcare system, from the built environment and other systems due to their race, we cannot and must not “move past” talking about race.
An important aspect of privilege is that you get to ignore the existence of race. People of color don’t have that privilege.