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> BLM's arguments register to me as sensational and consistently seem to fall apart in the face of basic statistics.

Do you have any examples of this?

I will concede however that racism did have a negative affect on black culture up to the mid 1900s and we're reaping the fruit today.

But twitter-mobbing and taking to the streets everytime somebody gets shot will never in a million years make real progress. Neither will zoning laws, or wellfare... Etc. These are only patches to the problem.

And as a black person, I'm embarrassed frankly - to have the media always portray black people as victims.

The solutions must come from within each black individual - the resolve to take lemons and make lemonade - which(even with all its faults) is a basic tennet of conservatives. I believe in sending the message to every person that you can make it in life - no matter how tough things get - and like I said before, this is basically the diametric opposite of the liberalism which seems to focus on equalizing outcomes in society rather than empowering people to escape victim mentality.

There are countless stories of people born and raised in abject poverty who are now millionaires... Why do you think I'm running a software Rust/ML consultancy? :P

> this is basically the diametric opposite of the liberalism which seems to focus on equalizing outcomes in society rather than empowering people to escape victim mentality.

I think the biggest problem in our political discourse is the degree to which people from different viewpoints/parties/etc make statements that aren’t the best faith representation of the other side’s perspective.

In this instance, I’ve never actually heard anyone besides liberals make the “equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome” comparison. I think a more reasonable dichotomy is that conservatives make the assumption that everyone has roughly equal opportunities while liberals don’t. In the end, both actually do believe in equality of opportunity.

As someone who does ML, you should connect with the probabilistic argument well: if we assume that am everyone has the same opportunities, who would we consistently see such disparities in outcome? The only answer is that there is something intrinsic to these groups that leads them to be the cause of their own shortfalls, which is the conservative argument you put forward here (that black culture is the problem).

The liberal counter argument is that there is a strong weight of hundreds of years of history in America to suggest that opportunity is very much not equal. Further, it’s an American value that we assume all people are equal regardless of race, therefore it’s most reasonable to assume that such disparities are the result of bias. This of course does not mean that individuals aren’t able to be statistical outliers due to their own efforts.

So here is an interview with a BLM organizer in NY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5XHGo_CTg4

The guy on the show is a respectable character, but he somehow manages to turn every issue into a race issue.

When I say basic statistics, I'm referencing the fact that BLM supporters will talk about issues that affect everybody and magically turn it into a race issue.

I'm not disputing for example that black people are affected more by COVID in the U.S.(https://sph.umich.edu/news/2020posts/covid-19-and-the-dispro...) but systemic racism?? Please...

OK - so the article says that black people tend to work lower income jobs than white Americans(this is true where I live) - so they had more interactions and chances to spread the virus... Fine. How on earth is that caused by racism?

Some will try to say that black people are zoned in poorer school districts and don't get as many oppurtunities. Somewhat true - I'll admit personal experience reflects this.

But, where I went to HS(where sent one black student to harvard a couple years before I graduated), most black students were simple uninterested in academics.

We had 20% asian, 25% black, 35%white, 20% other roughly. I've actually observed this consistently - black people just don't give a crap about trying in school or on the job - and it pains me to say this as a black person. I've observed a few exceptions to the rule. When I was in HS, black people always cared about new shoes, basketball, and hair.

And if you want to pretend that BLM leaders actually care or represent black lives... - https://www.npr.org/2022/04/07/1091487910/blm-leaders-face-q... - https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse... - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/black-lives-matter-fra... - https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-based-activist-faces-federa...

And right outside where I grew up, black officials in Atlanta regularly embezzle funds... Our roads are continually rundown and the water runs inconsistently... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasim_Reed#Bribery_charges_and...

Kaseem Reed had a huge cartel - many of which were corrupt black people.

There are obviously many great black people in the city too such as the late John Lewis.

But pretending that black people suffer in modern society because of "systemic racism" is mostly a lie. Yes, black people consistently come last in many metrics behind other people groups, but now it has more to do with black culture and less with racism.

I think the primary issue is a lack of fatherhood in many black communities. It may sound old fashioned, but 60 years ago, there was a 20% fatherlessness rate in the black community - now its more like 60%

Props to all the single moms out there, but two people seem to be better than raising children than just one.

Not that I don’t think your personal experiences aren’t interesting (they’re certainly different than my own), but you had said that the arguments fall apart against basic statistics, but you mostly offered personal anecdotes. The only statistics you cited were the fatherless household rate.

It would seem that it’s less about evidence and more about interpretation.

What do you think structural racism is?

Fair, yes mostly anecdotes, although the COVID article had some numbers about how COVID affects black people more and the margins relative to white people. Yes - interpretation. I may have to eat my words that BLM arguments fall apart, if they only fall apart in my interpretation.

But I'm not so convinced that BLM is helping anybody AFAICT.

I'm just now learning about structural racism. Thanks for this.

What are your own experiences, if I may ask? I'm curious.

I’m a white guy who grew up in the PNW. My city is often described as the whitest major city in the country, but the high school I went to had the one of the highest percentages of black students in the district, it’s been quite a while now, but it was somewhere around 15-20%. I didn’t know anyone who was seethingly racist, but racist jokes were common. As I went through grades, I had fewer and fewer black students in on my classes. I was mostly taking advanced placement classes my junior and senior year, and it seemed like the biggest determinant of who was in the was taking those classes was social class rather than attitude or effort.

I wouldn’t say I was necessarily any more “woke” than any of my peers, a lot of the realizations I’ve had about that time came later as an adult.

Frowning up in a liberal environment with liberal values definitely made me predisposed to accepting the left position on these issues, but there was also some tangible things that really connected to me, like the fact that ruby bridges is still only 67 years old. The past really isn’t all that far away.