Erica Etelson
1 min readNov 13, 2016

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Good piece except for the suggestion that we shame racists. I believe what we’re seeing now is a backlash against exactly that — shaming of “rednecks” for their racism, their ignorance, their way of life, their inferiority to cosmopolitan liberals. We can’t be silent when we observe racism but shaming is not the answer, it’s toxic, and it breeds a desire on the part of the shamed person to inflict shame and hurt on someone else — a child, a woman, a Muslim. I think there are better ways and am researching “best practices” for dismantling bigotry.

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Erica Etelson

Writer, voting rights activist, mutual aid organizer. Author of Beyond Contempt: How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide (New Society 2019).