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by wbsss4412 1476 days ago
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?

2 comments

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.