I will pose the two questions then that lie at the end of the discussion.

1. What do you want me to do?

2. What do you want our society to do?

+1.

quote:

Originally posted by Mikhailoh:
I will pose the two questions then that lie at the end of the discussion.

1. What do you want me to do?

2. What do you want our society to do?

1. Contribute to the discussion. Your post is a good contribution.

2. Wish I knew what would alleviate the situation. Racism is systemic.

My current pet peeve is with those--both white and black--who insist that if you, simply by accident of birth into the white race, have benefited from institutional racism, then you are a racist.

Racism is hatred of and/or discrimination against others by virtue of their race. The white defensiveness is there because most people who involuntarily benefit from institutional racism are not filled with hate and don't think that other races are "less than", and would solve the problem if they knew how. It is unfair to call those people racists.

To assume that no white people recognize institutional racism is also incorrect.

I agree that something must be done, and the current state of affairs is grieviously unjust to people of color, but labeling all white people racists helps absolutely nothing. Way to alienate and offend your natural allies.

I can understand the Robin Hood instinct which is IMO entirely behind the appeal of reparations, but what I think is silly is any notion that it would do any good. At best, the money re-apportioned based on skin color could materially improve, in the long term, the socioeconomic status of those on the receiving end, because it would be used as an investment in an entire sub-culture. For any given specific piece of reparations legislation, that best-case goal could be discussed and even studied by economists, to whatever extent their input would be considered valuable.

The rub, to me, is that then you'd have a society where non-black people would walk around every day thinking that some portion of what they work for would be taken from them and given to a black person.

Anybody who thinks that would help race relations, well, good luck with that.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
Way to alienate and offend your natural allies.

The left is very, very good at that. You’ve just described Bernie’s entire campaign.