Thank you for this, Mary. I didn’t really get into it in the article, but even beyond biases and assumptions I think there are ways that we all unintentionally support racist power structures.

Some of those are:
· Buying products from companies that use prison slave labor

· Investing in 401k portfolios that include private prison stocks

· Flipping property in gentrifying areas

· Voting for political representatives whose policies support or fail to challenge the existing power structure

· Ostracizing or refusing to hire people who have been convicted of non-violent crimes

· Calling predominately poor Black schools or areas “bad” rather than “underfunded” or “oppressed”

Obviously, participating in any of these behaviors does not make you a bigot. Some of these actions are simply unavoidable or even necessary. And that, to me, is the insidiousness of systemic racism — it is so pervasive as to be ingrained in our very way of life. Therefore, it requires intentional effort to dismantle as an anti-racist. Non-racists uphold the status quo by failing to challenge it, and therefore serve the racist agenda.

I thank you for looking past the verbiage to the essence of my sentiments.