The Washington Post is being criticized for a video it published in which ‘experts’ urge white people to make “white accountability groups.”
The outlet released a video Friday that is part of its podcast series called the New Normal with a segment titled “What is White racial identity and why is it important?” Fox News reported.
During the show, mental health experts and scholars weighed in on “why understanding your whiteness and the ways that white supremacy benefits you is an important part of becoming self aware,” the video’s YouTube caption read.
Professor and psychologist Rebecca Toporek told host Nicole Ellis, “White accountability groups are really helpful in terms of having a place to process, having a group of people whose responsibility it is to call me on things or to challenge me.”
However, crisis interventionist Kelsey Arias said, “The more you kind of dive into that, the more I’m really realizing how deeply rooted racism is to like my everyday thought process.”
“No matter how much you work that, there’s still even almost more work to be done,” she added.
Trauma therapist Ilyse Kennedy told Ellis, “We’re unpacking wrong things that we have been taught in history class. I realized that I needed to go back and unpack and reorganize everything that I had learned because it was completely through a white lens.”
“Most of us in doing this work have experienced this, where there’s a period of deep shame for being white and for acknowledging the harm that our ancestors have caused,” Kennedy stated.
Numerous people criticized the outlet’s video, and Twitter user Jesse Singal described it as a “very strange pseudoreligious movement that is likely to do more harm than good”:
“To fight my racism I should form a white accountability group, made up of other white people who call out my racism…? — So the cure to racism is further segregation. — I don’t see it working,” another user commented.
“Disgusting racism. Imagine thinking a person’s skin color means more than his or her individual humanity. Unbelievable,” yet another person replied.
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