On White Fragility and Race in CT. And thoughts on possible solutions..

So I posted this article:http://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-hartford-social-media-post-1220-20151219-story.html on FB.   And I suspect this fragile, pale, white woman goes to the church I used to go to.   Having gone to a mostly white church, and worked at the library in the same town... even though the town is actually more diverse than it appears, there is a real racial problem.   And it is continually perpetuated through the church, through the fact that the majority (if not all) of the town council are white.   The majority of the police force and fire department, from their pics on FB, all seem to be predominantly white...

Kids are bussed in from Hartford, but I would be genuinely worried about raising a brown child here.  

They get it from an early age.  They get it from being in an all-white church, which "sponsors" a brown girl from Haiti.   They get it from school, from the sanctification of MLK, and "the civil rights era which is over and done with".   They get it from reading books with white heroes/heroines, and movies with the same.

And I start to think, maybe it needs to change with the churches.   Maybe we stop letting churches be exempt from anti-discrimination.   Maybe we have to come in and stop letting churches preach "the other" and hate, and look through their CCD materials for racism and sexism.  

Maybe we need to integrate the churches.

Not just the schools.

But the lives.  

Because otherwise, the first real contact a "privileged" child has with someone of another color is in college.  And that does not always happen well.   And so there end up being bubbles in college, and no learning or exchange, or equality.  

I think we need to start with the churches now.  And if a church does not want diversity, it loses its tax free status and becomes a "hate group".  

Because I have heard hate coming from the mouths of churchgoers, and I stopped going.  If there is hate in a place that is supposed to be about love...  then how...