[wpietri]

For sure, which is why I said there were other ways to understanding.

A lot of my education here has come from people just talking about their daily lives on social media and in person. Many years ago I ended up going from having a pony tail to shaving my head. I was telling a group of friends that it was weird how differently people treated me. E.g., seeing people cross the street rather than walk near me. A black member of the group said, "Well now you know."

The systems-thinking aspect of it came to me later, as I was looking for explanations for all of the little bits of data that I kept coming across. It was only then that I found the more academic takes useful.

But I think these days it's very, very hard for a white person to credibly and honestly have no understanding that there are big problems with race in the US. Which I think is why we're seeing the right-wing moral panic around "Critical Race Theory", which few can define but many are sure is such a problem that we need laws to prevent white children from learning about actual white history.