Domestic Diversions

CNN’s John Blake distinguishes among factors holding us back from our future in the beloved community (excerpt):
When we talk about racism, we often focus on spectacular acts of cruelty. The ghoulish photo of Emmett Till’s face in an open coffin. The lynching postcards that some White Americans used to mail to one another. The snarling faces of White students who surrounded a young Black woman who tried to integrate an Arkansas high school.
But the look of disinterest in Chauvin’s eyes is a reminder that indifference — not just hate — is a critical part of how racism works.
The late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel once said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
Wiesel said that to the indifferent person, “his or her neighbor are of no consequence… Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an abstraction.”