A Mother's White Privilege: As the ongoing events in Ferguson, Missouri show us, America's racial tensions didn't disappear when George Wallace backed down from the schoolhouse door. Dr. King didn't wave a magic wand, and we never got together to feel all right. White America remembers this at ugly flashpoints: the Rodney King beatings, the OJ Simpson trial, the Jena Six, Trayvon Martin's death. White America recoils in horror not at the crimes -- though the crimes are certainly horrible. It's not the teenagers gunned down, the police abuse, the corrupt trials. It's this: at these sudden, raw moments, in these riots and demonstrations and travesties of justice, White America is forced to gaze upon the emotional roil of oppression, the anger and fear and deep grief endemic to the black American experience. Black America holds up a mirror for us.
And white America is terrified to look.
