Claritas Moralis

You know when I finally got racism in America?

I read something, I think it was a piece by James Baldwin, which said to be a black man (yeah, black man, grrr) in America was to feel unending humiliation and rage, to see all those around you having an actually good life and to know yourself forever locked out of it simply because you were born different from them.

And I, a poor white woman, said, "Hey, I know that feeling!"

But that's why Baldwin reached me: I knew that feeling. What do you do with people who have never known that feeling and think it's a reflection of "moral failings"? That's why I don't post here more often than I do. The frustration at trying to make people with means see that piling up yet more pelf is starving their fellows who are struggling as hard as they can to survive and getting nowhere is fundamentally enraging, and you only hear rage if you already share it.