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Hey all, my name is George and I am a 34 year old white man who was born and raised in Pike Creek, Delaware, a white suburb of Wilmington, Delaware. I was bused to an inner city school for elementary school, and then children from the city were bused to our suburban schools. I moved to Philly in 2015, and have lived in a poorer neighborhood since I got here. I have some experience with anti-racism. I absolutely think that the laws, rules and regulations still impact our society today. Generations of wealth building and opportunities have stratified differences among white people and non-white people of color. In 2020, it's also been very evident that practices are still in place that adversely impact non-white people of color. After watching the videos, I think that our country is uglier than I even did before watching them. We have systematically discriminated and harmed almost every non-white group, and exploited most of them as well. I am deeply sad. I believe that reparations and drastic policy changes are the only ways we can even begin to turn the ship around. Doing personal work is important, and institutions must engage if we are to turn around institutional racism.

I'm a white woman, and my biological mother is also white, but one of my half-brothers is mixed race because his father is Black. We are 17 years apart in age, and he grew up with our mother while I grew up with my father, in two different states, so our lives are very different anyway, but I wonder how much race has shaped his experience in ways that it never shaped mine. Watching the video of the young Black men talking about being stopped by police for just doing every day things, I wonder how much that kind of thing has happened to my half-brother. Recognizing that I have not ever had to worry about race growing up, that I have never had to wonder if someone was treating me differently because of the color of my skin, I realize I have been privileged in ways that many others have not.

When reading the pieces assigned and the videos. There are some really horrific implications through environmental racism or terrorism, through systematic discrimination of housing, gasoline baths with toxins. Are you just learning about these things? Or is this old news to you? Or a mix of both? Now knowing these things how does this impact all of you carrying this knowledge?