I also think it is worth noting that for many white journalists, pundits and lawmakers, white supremacy is just another political topic of conversation, a spicier version of tort reform, the same thing as disagreeing about taxes...

White supremacy, to the white ruling class, is not a real physical threat and certainly not worthy of an existential crisis. Confronting it correctly, however, most definitely is

Consider that for generations the vast majority of white ppl in this country--white writers, intellectuals, artists--didn't seem particularly pressed that Black ppl had no right to vote and were systemically murdered in the South

They knew all that about this country and still wrote and spoke, with their whole chest, about america's freedom and promise and glory.

At the same time Black people were being lynched and raped, those white artists, intellectuals, thinkers were writing novels about how the worst fate in the US was to be a white man who wanted to be a writer but couldn't

that's the cultural reality that many wish we could go back to