[munificent]

To be clear, I didn't say the past was good or equitable or that I would prefer it over today.

The progress we've made in civil rights — there are women alive today who were born before women could vote! — is great and the current administration shows that we still have a long way to go.

But note that while we have made progress on civil rights in many ways, the increasing economic disparity hurts underrepresented groups too. "It's worse for white people but better for black people" is an over-simplification. Black people are suffering under these economic problems too.

[rexpop]

Yours is a phenomenal analogy, I thought, but as the comment opening this thread insinuated, you are naive.

> increasing economic disparity hurts underrepresented groups too

Close, but increasing economic disparity hurts underrepresented groups _most_. And, as it's been said, what we have made is only generously defined as progress--and most vehemently by those who seek to halt what little progress we've made as "sufficient".

> If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress.

This Malcolm X quote does a great job highlighting how the cessation of a particular oppression is hardly progress. Since slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and Red-Lining, there has been little in the way of reparations to make African American communities whole--not to mention the millions of Mesoamericans(1) similarly exploited in the history of American Imperialism(2), and still to this day(3)!

So, thanks again for that completely brilliantly painted analogy. I hope you find these texts offer some compelling augmentations to your understanding.

1) Eduardo Galeano's "The Open Veins of Latin America"

2) Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz' "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States"

3) CrimethInc's "No Wall They Can Build"

[munificent]

This is a common problem I see in arguments with progressives. You are considering the failure to reach an ideal state as equivalent to zero progress, and attacking anyone who acknowledges incremental wins as undermining the cause.

> Close, but increasing economic disparity hurts underrepresented groups _most_.

Yes, so, you should celebrating that you and are in agreement that increasing economic disparity is bad.

> And, as it's been said, what we have made is only generously defined as progress

It is progress in any and all possible definitions. Going from "black people are legally considered property" to "a black person is the President of the United States of America" in less than 200 years sounds like a hell of a lot of progress to me.

> and most vehemently by those who seek to halt what little progress we've made as "sufficient".

Nowhere does anyone claim it is "sufficient". You are painting anyone who's not as idealistically pure as you as an enemy. That's not an effective strategy for gaining support or furthering your cause. It's a mixture of defeatism, elitism, alienation, and sanctimony.

This is something people on the right actually do really well. They are always celebrating their success and building each other up. Reading political news, I often feel like no one can tear down a Democrat quite like another Democrat. Where is the teamwork? Why don't we let our opponents attack us instead of doing their job for them?

> If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress.

Here's the full quote:

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.

Call me crazy, but I'm not aware of any strategy for healing a wound that doesn't involve removing the knife first.

[rexpop]

> I'm not aware of any strategy for healing a wound that doesn't involve removing the knife first.

When did I advocate for simultaneous slavery and reparations?