This isn't an argument I can present. This requires policy to be encated which I can then show you a before and after for. If I'd told you, before the blind auditions, that women and Asians were being unfairly excluded from orchestras you'd have told me that there was no evidence for discrimination and we should "get to the root of the problem instead of assuming." All I can offer you right now are statistics which show disparity, because effective policies haven't been put in place to address the inequality.

I don't have a victim mentality. Not at all. I'm perfectly happy with where I am in life. I also recognise that some black people do have a victim mentality. This doesn't mean that racism isn't a factor...God, honestly, typing that sentence yet again just sucked the will to live out of me. You're asking for proof I can't provide. All the corroborating evidence I can offer you has and will continue to be swatted away. And ultimately, it makes no difference.

I've acknowledged so many times already that disparity doesn't equal racism. But you don't accept that racism is a meaningful factor in disparity at all, partly because you're operating on a definition of racism whic only takes into accout the immediate circumstances of a person and the best possible way they could handle them, and not the cultural and environmental factors which are also due to past racism and also affect people's trajectories through life. And partly because you want proof that can't exist before the fix has already been applied, which makes the disparity question moot.

I mean, how the hell am I supposed to show you two identical business plans etc, etc, etc.? You're setting an impossible standard of proof and then acting as if I'm the one being unreasonable when I point that out. And of course, one set of identical plans wouldn't be enough even if I could produce them. That might be down to the loan officer having a bad day. Or maybe there were two different loan officers making the decisions. Really I'd need to provide some unspecifiable number of identical applications before we could be sure that racism was a factor. On and on.

So fine. As I said, even if I convinced you, it wouldn't make a difference in a single black person's life. And I won't convince you. So there's absolutely nothing for me to gain by having this conversation. I don't mean to be dismissive, but this is nothing more than an intellectual abstraction to you. The answer doesn't affect your life or the life of anybody you care about. You're not about to implement any policies which improve conditions for black people or combat the effects of bias. This begins and ends as a conversation you had on the internet, that's not the case for me.

So sure. Racism isn't a meaningful factor in any of the disparities we see. It's just victim mentality and incompetence all the way down. Black and white people have exactly the same access to opportunity throughout our lives. The devastating impact of Jim Crow has been completely nullified in the less than sixty years since the laws were repealed.