Yes, we're in complete agreement here. I don't think that racism is the root of all the black community's problems. Nor do I think it's behind all disparities. But I do think it's a significant factor in the disparities I mention in the article. That's why I mentioned them.
But come on man. "It took 90 years and hundreds of thousands of white lives" to get rid of slavery. Do you really not see the problem with your framing here? I'm not minimising the efforts and sacrifice of white poeple. I've written about the abolitionists numerous times. But how do you talk about the end of slavery as if white people are the heroes of that story without recognising that they were also the villains?
No mention of the hundreds of thousands of white people who gave their lives to maintain slavery? No mention of the fact that the elimination of slavery wasn't about the elimination of racism but the maintenance of the union? No mention of the fact that racist laws remained in place for a hundred years after the abolition of slavery and indeed many new racist laws were created specifically to make sure black people were kept down?
It's your desire to look away from the uglier facts of this history, facts that make your claim that "the elimination of racism has been a project since America's inception" obviously ridiculous, that is so frustrating. I have never and would never claim that all white people are complicit in any of this. But some of you sure do like to ignore the bits that don't make white people the heroes of the story.
As for me "launching myself at you", it's the accumulation of this denialism that pushed my frustration into overdrive. I often keep that frustration in check in the name of productive conversation, but invoking MLK after claiming thtat America has been trying to eliminate racism for centuries just really hit me the wrong way.
The only reason you know MLK's name is that this is not true. I don't know how old you are, but if you're claiming that the systems in America haven't been racist in your lifetime, then you'd better be younger than 56. And even if you are, you'd have to believe that the lives of black people who were discriminated against by those racist laws transformed overnight as soon as the ink was dry on the Civil Rights Act. This is obviously not true.
Ultimately, the problem I think a lot of conservatives have is that they take an "attack" on America as an attack on them personally. I put attack in quotes because I'm absolutely not attacking America. Nor am I attacking you.
America has a deeply racist, fairly recent history. This isn't an attack. It's a fact. All I'm interested in is suggesting productive ways to more forward from that. The woke crybabies make that more difficult which is why I call them out. People who want to deny this fact or look away from the ugly parts make that more difficult, which is why I call them out too. Electing a black president was a big moment for America. No doubt. But the way some people act as if that fixed everything is infuriating.
Obama's election could definitely be argued to mean that America has reached a point where the colour of your skin doesn't flat out prevent success. But that's a long way from saying that we’ve reached MLK’s promised land. Do you honestly think that the colour of a person's skin makes no difference to the way they're treated or their chances of success in 2021 America? All the people I refer to in this article would disagree with you. Do you honestly think that past racist laws have no impact on the present? People who live in ghettos and poor communities that just happen to have been formerly redlined areas would disagree with you.
This isn't your fault. You're not the bad guy in this story because you aren't affected by these things. But you're being asked to look at the people around you instead of just your own life before arguing that society is race-blind. You're being asked to consider that your experience has been wildly different to that of some other people for no reason other than the colour of your skin. And though this reply is getting very long (sorry about that), let me just make one last thing clear.
What I'm saying here doesn't apply equally to all black people.
One of the most infuriating things about our current dialogue on race is the way that some black people talk as if the full weight of 400 years of racism rests on their shoulders. This is obviously bullshit. Most of the people writing their articles about microaggressions and the "7 Ways You're Secretly Racist" live happy, comfortable lives precisely because America has made a lot of progress with regards to race.
The people I try to spotlight in my articles aren't writing on Medium, they're trying to survive in circumstances that they shouldn't ever have had to deal with. They're trying to succeed from a starting point that is far behind everybody else. Those people are overwhelmingly black. I put all of those links in my articles because I want people to see the data on people whose lives are very different to theirs. I want the whiners to shut up so that the situation those people are dealing with can be seen more clearly. And in your case, I want you to stop acting as if truly recognising that injustice is an attack on you or America.
