| > and that despite not knowing any single person who would actively discriminate against someone I've met plenty of people who I believe would actively discriminate against someone because of their race, and I'm an asocial white person who avoids public spaces. I just replied to a comment on this very page that openly argued that unequal outcomes in Black communities were the result of biological differences. I don't know what word to use for the belief that Blacks are biologically inferior other than the word 'racist'. I can't speak to anyone else's experiences, maybe you've been fortunate to interact with better communities than me, but I don't personally think this stuff is particularly rare. If we're going off of what is and isn't hard to believe, I don't find systemic racism to be far-fetched. There was, objectively, an omnipresent, elaborate rouse being played on Black communities for the entirety of American history leading up to at least the civil rights act. That part isn't debatable. So for me, the wild conclusion to draw is that after >180 years of targeted oppression, everyone involved in those systems immediately vanished after a law was passed. 60 years is not enough time to fix wealth gaps in a preexisting neighborhood, not unless we take active steps to fix them. It's just really obvious to me that the reason many ghettos exist is because we built them; there's records of banks deliberately choosing not to invest in those areas because of race. We never did any kind of restitution plan or went back and gave those communities the investment money we denied them earlier. Those areas didn't immediately become rich or get better schools just because a law was passed. But if you want to look at statistics instead of anecdotes, this is also something that has been studied a lot if you're willing to put in the effort to research it. There's a lot that people can debate around systemic racism, but at the very least, it's pretty hard not to acknowledge that there are unequal outcomes happening. I know you saw breakyerself's comment, do you think that none of those stats are worth being concerned about? |