[wisty]

What if you are wrong?

You seem to think it's important to believe there is a caste system, which is moving close to Abrahamic Religion territory - you have to believe because (sometimes irrational) faith becomes the very bedrock of your belief system.

You you don't believe, you are part of the problem, right?

[Avshalom]

Well if tehblackbloc's wrong then racism in america is the action of quite a lot of people and the inaction of many more.

"fuck those people" still aint exactly unreasonable.

Though I'm not sure where you got the idea that it was "important to believe there is a caste system" from what was pretty much a cut and paste definition of racism as used in large chunks of civil rights activism/academia.

[wisty]

From the parent:

> In fact, the caste system of racism is maintained by all of us, in the same way the rest of the status quo is maintained. Mostly just by people being comfortable enough with the status quo that they don't try very hard to change it, and end up reinforcing it without even realising.

By implication, if you're not against there caste system, you're for it. And if you don't believe in the caste system, how can you be against it?

And I don't think it's a helpful definition. It could confuse a stupid person into thinking a dumb celebrity twitting a racial slur is one of the primary causes of inequality.

The "caste system" is entrenched poverty. Visual markers (skin colour) might make it harder to fight the poverty cycle (as it speeds up white flight, and causes some profiling and other discrimination), but the fundamental problem is no longer about race.

The poverty cycle in the US was caused by racism, and is to some extent worsened by racism. But if you want to stop it, you have to fight poverty. Free community college level education to young mothers (and young fathers), remedial literacy (for the kids who need it) in K-6. A few busses, to prevent the segregation due to white flight. That's just IMO, there's probably some things I'm missing.

Fighting the caste system is more or less orthogonal to fighting racism.