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coffeesp00ns  ·  3232 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: America's struggle

    I don't think I'd go that far. I feel it's a no brainer to say that minorities are often tasked with more work to get somewhere than someone who fits in with the majority. However, I feel it is off putting to freckleds (or any favoriable skin type) to say they were just lucky.

Imagine all of the problems you currently have. Then imagine you have all of those same problems, but are also black, or brown. There are lots of people of all colours and creeds who have a hard time (I've even been one of them), but the fact remains that if You're white, you're more likely to get a loan from a bank (even if your financial standing is identical to the person of colour next to you), you're less likely to be stopped by the police, and less likely to be arrested if you are stopped (even if your actions are identical). Juries are less likely to give you a harsh sentence if you do break the law.

when someone tells you you're lucky to be the freckled kid, they're not predjudiced, they're just telling you the truth. Sometimes you may not want to hear the truth, or it might hurt you, but that doesn't make it any less the truth.

The truth is that my friend Theron, one of the best pianists I've ever met and deserving of all the success he has, must be careful what kind of car he buys because he'll get pulled over if it's too nice, or too new, or too expensive. That's not an assumption, I'm relaying to you what has happened. My friend Esther was on the side of the road for more than an hour as the police called first her parents, then the insurance company because they didn't believe that the late model Lexus she was driving was hers, or that she lived in the upper class neighbourhood that her parents (doctors) have a house in. They thought, even though there was significant evidence to the contrary, that she had stolen the vehicle, and the address on her license, her name on the insurance and registration, and the word of her parents was not enough.

It's not the individual people in the system that are racist. The bank manager giving out the loan isn't a racist, and the cop that pulled you over might even be a person of colour. It's systemic.