[wizofaus]

I get the feeling you don't really understand how racism works. It doesn't mean "I think everyone from a different ethnic background is somehow a worse person". It's often completely subconscious - your reaction to the observed behaviour of another person is nearly always coloured to some extent by the degree you consider them part of some category largely based on their superficial physical appearance (skin colour, hair colour/style, eye or nose shape etc.). Racism is when you let that colouring adversely affect the way you treat such individuals. It might even be assuming that because they look, say, Jewish you treat them with an expectation of being more intelligent than average.

[illuminerdy]

Well, I actually agree with you to some extent. I've been saying for a long time that everyone is prejudiced in some way. But that is never going to change. Human beings are, by nature, tribal. Even if we do it only on a subconscious level.

To that point, some of the most racist people I know are black people. Growing up as a black person myself in Brooklyn, and hearing it spoken often, I can tell you that there is no one that black people around here dislike more than Jews. It's an irrational kind of hatred based on the normal nonsense "they own all the banks, they own all the property", etc. If you messed up your credit and can't get a loan, it's the Jews fault. If someone gets evicted because they didn't pay their rent for 6 months, its' the Jews fault. That kind of thing. Racism and prejudice exists in all of us.

But you're right, I probably don't really understand how racism works. Because I have never actually experienced real racism. But, to be fair, neither has 99.9% of the people you see on your TV, social media or in the streets screaming about racism because a white person put their hair in dreadlocks or some other such nonsense. What was the most recent one, Drew Barrymore frolicking in the rain was somehow "erasing black people"?

Look, no one denies that there are actual racist people in the world. But the current state of discourse on this topic is a complete joke. REAL racism is largely a thing of the past. The problem is that what people are trying to classify as real racism these days are just wildly over exaggerated claims based on there being a racist boogeyman around every corner.

The truth is that the 'everything is racist' mantra, or the overexaggerated claims of racism, is actually funded and promoted by global elites and politicians who would very much like to create as much division as possible to keep us focused on non-issues like race instead of the fact that every time one of these "crises" occurs, their net income doubles. We are sadly being played as pawns.

[psyc]

> But the current state of discourse on this topic is a complete joke.

I want to make it clear that I agree with you 100% on that much. We're more polarized this year than last year, and we already thought it was very polarized then. I was born in the 70's, I'm an attentive and perceptive dude, and I've never seen anything close to this. People tell me it was worse right before I was born. Someone here gave me a book about the Weather Underground but I haven't finished it yet.

I think it's a blessing in a way that everyone lives in their phone. If the culture war were playing out predominately in meat space, way more people would be dying.

The kids call ideas from 20 years ago reactionary. Wait, hold up. Too many of the kids -know- and believe they -need- the word reactionary, what the fuck, and I'm not talking about vocab.

But I still maintain that the policed do not bear more responsibility than the police. The police are the professionals, and they're the ones empowered to kill people.