[underlipton]

I've tried to square the racial-justice-amorality of the "someone fck sht up, I don't care who" crowd with the racist sources of many of their grievances (as someone who can't afford such extravagant feelings). The roots of so many of our issues with abuse of the downtrodden, the impunity of the elite, the distrust of populist-minded institutions, the misplaced trust in monsters who whisper sweet words, etc., come from our history of racialized classism.

I don't know how you convey to such people how these problems don't get solved without rectifying the racist underpinnings - that "that's not okay" only gets teeth when "that's okay because it only happens to 'those' people" is no longer accepted. Only then do you see a substantial decrease in face-eating leopards.

[api]

A huge problem is that a lot of poor white folks see attempts to rectify racial or other injustices as a slap in the face, because they see themselves (perhaps correctly) as among the downtrodden. It turns into a battle of comparing wounds. Is a poor white person with no health care and no job prospects living in a dying town better or worse off than an urban black kid who grew up with a broken family in a bad neighborhood surrounded by crime? Are either of these better or worse off than a gay or trans person who's been bullied and ostracized by their community, or a battered wife whose community sides with her abuser, or a woman who was raped and forced to bear the child?

It's very easy for populist demagogue con artists to pit these groups against each other or focus all these groups' anger at one third party scapegoat ("the Jews," "the rich," or some foreign enemy are popular choices) in order to gain power.

A big problem is that real solutions to these problems don't fit nicely into 140 characters. They require that people stop and take the time to understand one another and the historical forces that created their situations, empathize with one another, and find win/win solutions. Populist demagoguery, scapegoating, and totalitarian schemes do fit neatly into sound bites, so they're easier to spread especially in an era of collapsing attention spans.

[KittenInABox]

Another issue is that class-based inter-racial cooperation was actively persecuted and propgagandized against by the government. Fred Hampton was an American activist who was building a coalition across racial divides. The FBI launched an entire political campaign to sow dissent against him specifically and, when that wasn't working, the police shot him in his bed.