Donny Jackson: The Internalized Stains of Slavery and Why Empathy Cannot Develop Without Interaction Across Racial Lines
Update: 2025-11-17
Description
Donny Jackson, poet and psychologist, reflects on growing up as a working-class black kid in Pittsburgh where his father was a postal worker for 35 years and his mother was a nurse's aide—parents who instilled work ethic, integrity, and honor while navigating a world not built for young black children. Jackson traces the roots of American racism to the legacy of slavery where black people started as chattel on unequal footing and never shed that history, creating an internalized stain on both sides of the racial fence. He explains how separate but equal was never true, how tribalism prevents empathy development because it is much harder to oppress someone whose feelings you have taken into account, and why redlining and subtle discrimination in apartment rentals remain part of the disease of living a racialized life. Drawing from Isabel Wilkerson's research, Jackson highlights how FDR-era policies designed to improve American life excluded black people, creating structural racism that takes a toll. He warns that 70 million Trump voters represent at least 70 million reasons to remain fearful even after Biden's election.
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