We might just slip into semantics here, but by my definition, black people (I loathe the term “blacks”) aren’t an oppressed group. Describing them as such would require some kind of legal component that affects all black people which hasn’t been the case for 60 years in America. I mean, is Oprah oppressed? Is Barack Obama oppressed? Is Jay Z oppressed? Are the millions of other successful, well educated, happy African Americans oppressed?

Black people experience varying degrees of prejudice in white-majority societies as do minorities of various types in almost all societies. I believe everything possible should be done to reduce and hopefully completely eliminate this. But calling oneself oppressed today, when our lives are better than 90% of the world, is narcissistic at best.

Now, of course, black people in America and South Africa are unique in that there was legally enforced discrimination against them, the after-effects of which certainly haven’t been corrected for all of them. I take this issue extremely seriously. But it's a separate issue to the question of black people as a whole being “devalued”.

The "value" of black people, like the value of all things, is subjective. Bitcoin, gold, a family heirloom, they have no intrinsic, fixed value. It's in the eye of the beholder. So If you allow the beholder to be some racist archetype that you probably very rarely actually encounter, you might feel that you're devalued. But that's up to you. It's incredibly important to absorb this idea.

Black people are thriving at every level of society. Business, fashion, culture, politics, science you name it. Again, I want that to continue and to grow and I believe it will. The fact that some people are uncomfortable with that, as long as they can’t stop it (which they can’t), doesn’t affect my perception of black people's value in the least. I’m not in the habit of taking my cues from racists.