I am thankful for Dominique DuBois Gilliard’s “The Unbearable Whiteness of Being” (April 2015). His phrases explain our status quo in the U.S.: “American Empire,” “exceptionalism,” “social sentinel [that] names boundaries and polices purity,” “encoded within our moral language,” and “ethical superiority.” These ideas have become ingrained in our society and, unfortunately, accepted by far too many Americans.
As a retired teacher, I became a member of the Occupy movement. I wanted to work toward justice by helping to expose greed, which especially hurts the marginalized. This was, for me, an opportunity to demonstrate that we are all sisters and brothers in Christ. We must not allow silence or complacency to keep us, as Gilliard states, “from responding to one another based on a baptismal ethic that calls us into solidarity with one another, rather than a capitalistic logic that pits us against one another.” Even some universities hire professors who are handpicked by the corporate world to further their agendas.
We must come to grips with our history so that truth can set us free—free to become a nation not of continued exploitation, but rather one attempting to embody all-encompassing fairness.
Sharon Wright
Erie, Pennsylvania
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