| You're right, many racists will just continue to be racists because they won't encounter the environment or ideas to change. Just like there will be some people who are murderers. I think you're misunderstanding what it means that free will doesn't exist. We still exist as part of a complex system and encountering new information and changing environments can alter how we think about things and the decisions that we make. Some of us will change how we think and behave in some ways and some in others. We can be aware of these systemic effects and try to manipulate them in the right way. Now I know what you might be thinking, if we don't have free will how can we change anything? We, our individual selves, exist as nodes in this system and we can communicate with others our ideas on how we might be able to change things, we can try to analyze the systemic effects of behaviors and policies in an effort to change the system in a way that, based on our experiences and information that we've learned, we see as being beneficial toward future progress. I know, it almost sounds like I just described free will, right? The point of this is that we can't make decisions on information we haven't encountered or learned. We can't understand the perspective of a situation we haven't encountered or learned about. The system is far more complex than we consider on a daily basis, what we regularly encounter. This goes for all people and its why education is important, its why communication with people who are different than ourselves with different perspectives is important. Most people, even if they don't think so, have extremely limited perspectives including myself. I should note that I'm using the concept of "decision making" as a black box idea for the information processing that we do. Think about it like biology. The systems are extremely complex, many things interact with each other in such a way that many different changes in the system could be root causes to the same set of changes in behavior or symptoms. If we identify a problem, going directly at that symptom is like taking cough medicine when you have a cold. Maybe you'll stop coughing a bit, but you haven't done anything to cure the cold itself |
I do think it's hard to make a case that we lack free will if we also want to hold ourselves and each other accountable for the actions we take and for making the kinds of choices that either bring us closer to a more harmonious system or drive us further into disorder.
We must have free will in order to choose to try to consciously shape the system we live in into one that promotes our desired outcomes. We may not understand the universe from all perspectives, but as you say, we can work to learn about perspectives other than our own and the systems we're a part of.
In the case of inner city violence amongst black people, the shooters and victims each have a unique perspective on the situation which gives them a valuable role in helping to solve the problem. That alone means they aren't powerless or absolved from responsibility in being a part of the solution. I'll also agree I think that whatever the solution is, it will involve wider changes than any one of them will be capable of putting into action on their own.
I just worry when I see anyone who broaches the topic get dismissed or accused of racism. In fairness, racists really do love to bring it up, but you can't solve a problem if no one is allowed to mention it and the more we look like we're ignoring it, or pretending the problem isn't real, or that it cannot be solved, or that black people themselves have no role in that solution, the more fuel it lends to racist's arguments.
Generally we need to be more forthcoming about inconvenient truths than we are so they lose power as "gotchas". I think we can do that in this case while still addressing that the problem is more involved than "black people should just stop shooting each other". Because racists tend to be conservative and conservatives obsess over responsibility and punishment, it's good to acknowledge that murders are responsible for their actions (at least to the extent that any of us are) and that the people in those situations have a responsibility to help solve it, just as the rest of us have a responsibility to do our part, as our society has them backed them into a corner.
It doesn't help that racists aren't generally fans of nuance, but I think it's better to meet them halfway by not giving murders a pass, while also trying to let them know that black people aren't the only ones with responsibility for the situation.