So who gets to decide that and tell people they’re either prejudice or racist?
The second part I completely agree with
Truthfully, I don't think it matters who gets to be wrong and "wronger:. But, it is important to understand how one transgression can make the other seem rather minute in comparison, and for us to understand how one precipitates the other. It is a cycle that has to be broken, and all parties have to be willing to broker that. What I find to be the most aggravating is that those who say that the issue isn't systematic rarely want to acknowledge the blight on our nations history that is slavery, or be willing to accept that the length of time since there were very abhorrent, shameful policies like segregation are not as far removed from its fabric as they'd like to contend. They seem to discount that these ideas were still acceptable to people even after their practices were ended, and that suddenly those people would do a 180 and let all of those feelings just disappear, and not pass those along to their descendants and so on and so forth. It is just natural, which is why it needs real work and effort.
Politically, one party uses this to contend that you have a group of free loaders that need constant coddling. Alternatively, you have a party that leverages the issues but doesn't do nearly enough to try and resolve them in my opinion. Think about the scars that an entire race has that are passed down through its many generations. This isn't intended to promote a notion of guilt or atonement by people that are white. It is a basis for trying to engage on the issues and try and identify the crux of why people might feel that way. I have been blessed, as a mixed man, to attain a level of personal success that was very much due to the influence of good relationships with educated, successful white people, despite the fact that my mother was also well educated as a black woman. Those relationships are probably the most important thing that has lead me here. And those relationships are not nearly as easy to attain in every pocket of our society as you'd believe, because you haven't visited every pocket of society.
I get why some people might say that they want proof of institutional racism with statistics. Links like the following may or not be comprehensive enough for them, idk
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/
The truth is people are resistant to an idea because they have been trained or learned to be(the mind is a double-edged sword that way), and you can hit them with fact after fact and they'll still want to resist it, or anecdotal evidence that they won't be able to gain perspective from, and I totally get someone coming back at me with this logic to tell me that I am the one who is resistant.
Another truth, is that if someone really wants to go the route of engaging with someone on these topics, a message board is a poor forum for it. Honestly, if anyone in Tallahassee ever wants to get together to go over these topics, regardless of their position, and can do it in a respectful, open manner, I'm all for it. Send me a DM and I'm down
