There are two things I learned from African American progressive culture that are of enormous importance to me, and that are pretty much opposite from what I learned in white UU progresive culture.
One is about leadership.
White liberals often idealize "leaderless" groups. But from the perspective of an oppressed community, getting rid of your leaders is nonsense.
I learned to understand that leadership, even strong leadership, is about serving your people, protecting them, helping them work for what is right. Or helping them find spirit again, when their spirit has been broken. It's not about tyranny or ego.
It doesn't mean that leaders don't make mistakes, even tyrannical mistakes. But they still need to be valued, and educated with care and respect. In an oppressed community, to encourage assassination of your leadership is just plain irresponsible. Strong leaders are precious; they save hearts and lives.
The other is about children, cultural identity, and protection from harsh realities.
Educators of liberal white youth may teach them to celebrate the idea that I, individually, am different or unique; but they avoid the idea that I am part of a people, a group that is collectively different from the dominant culture. They teach us to ignore differences, that everyone is basically the same.
If a child feels profoundly different from the other children, the commonly assumed goal, in white liberal culture, is to reassure the child that this is not true.
Educators of minority youth do not have that luxury. They know that youth need to be given a sense of cultural identity, history, and pride if they are going to make it into full adulthood.
As a UU child, I wasn't taught that there are powerful active organizations in this country that would like to see me and my kind destroyed. Being called a "heretic" and burned at the stake was something that happened only in the distant and foggy past. In college, as I struggled with the culture shock of entering the outside world, I saw that the Black students had been better prepared than I had been. They knew that the outside world would be full of hostile forces, forces that denied the inherent worth of all people. I had not been told. I was not prepared.
Every parent feels the desire to protect their child from the awful knowledge of oppression in this world, but sometimes, knowledge is the better protection.