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by mtgp1000 2169 days ago
>I have been trying to educate myself about the topic recently, though, and would strongly recommend looking into some of the excellent work on systemic racism in the US if you’re interested in learning more.

The fact that people write about this doesn't make it necessarily true. You should bear in mind that people are at least partly incentivised to write about this topic because it gives them soft power over individuals and society when it enters the mainstream - regardless of whether it's true. In other words you should recognize that you are potentially consuming propaganda.

>The documentary “13th” (available for free on YouTube at the moment), the 2nd season of the podcast Scene On Radio (“Seeing White”), and the book How to Be An Anti-Racist are three things I can recommend based on what I’ve read/heard from them so far.

All of this theory is based on the assumption that any two demographics with different cultures (i.e. with different notions of good/evil and just/unjust, varied attitudes toward the prioritization of work/study/sport, gender roles, etc) are equally suited, on average, for any field where we expect demographic parity. This is a fundamentally unproven modern assumption - and it doesn't make much sense when you consider how much influence culture has over individual interests and practiced abilities.

Now we are extrapolating from this unproven (and I suspect unprovable) assumption and using it as justification for discrimination against whites. Not only that, but we don't even have valid metrics for the degree to which racism influences society - because again there is no scientific justification for equal representation of all demographics in groups of individuals selected by merit.

>What you’re calling the “recent forced redefinition of racism” is not especially recent. I first heard this argument around 30 years ago, and at the time dismissed it, but now understand why people want to emphasize that over the definition I recall learning as a child which was structured along the lines of a belief in superiority of one group over another.

If you want to emphasize a new concept, you create a new word, you don't hijack an existing word and use it to denigrate or gain social power over others.

>Having a system that is designed and reinforced to encourage disparate outcomes is far more impactful to that group as a whole

Even if it were true, that all, or even the majority, of outcome disparity in modern western society is due to a broken system, that doesn't change the fact that this movement is effectively labeling white people as implicitly, innately, and inescapably evil. Where does it end? Isn't this literally the foundation for violence and atrocity?