During Monday’s Democracy in Color DNC debate, Idaho Democratic Party Executive Director and DNC Chair candidate Sally Boynton Brown stated that “my job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt. My job is to shut other white people down when they want to say, oh, no, I’m not prejudiced. I’m a Democrat. I’m accepting.’ My job is to make sure that they get that they have privilege.” And argued the DNC should have training for people in “how to shut their mouths if they’re white.” Brown said, “Black lives matter, and it makes me sad that we’re even having that conversation, and that tells me that white leaders in our party have failed. we have to accept that there is prejudice that exists within our own party, and we have to able to have that conversation. We cannot sweep that under the rug. We cannot continue to hide it. We cannot smash voices down when they are trying to scream, ‘Listen to me, you don’t get it.’ I’m a white woman. I don’t get it. I am pleased and honored to be here today to have the conversation. I am so excited that we’re here, and I’m listening, because that’s my job. My job is to listen to the issues.”
She added, “My job is to listen and be a voice, and my job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt. My job is to shut other white people down when they want to say, oh, no, I’m not prejudiced. I’m a Democrat. I’m accepting.’ My job is to make sure that they get that they have privilege. And until we shut our mouths, and we listen to those people who don’t, and we lift our people up, so that we all have equity in this country, so that we’re all fighting alongside each other, so that we are all on the same page, and we clearly get where we’re going, we’re not going to break through this. This is not just rhetoric. This is life or death. This moment in our country, the Democratic Party has the opportunity to do something different. We have the opportunity to really confront the fact that we have not been in alignment with our values. We’ve been talking a lot of smack. We need to make sure that our actions and our words and our values all match, and around the issue of race, we are so far out of alignment, I don’t even know the way back.”
Brown further stated that Idaho is “so white.” And she’s been trying to reach out to anyone of color “to be honest with me.” She added, “I need schooling…so that I can go school the other white people. We need it.”
She concluded that the DNC needed to train people in how to communicate, be sensitive, “and how to shut their mouths if they’re white.”
