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galen  ·  3228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: America's struggle

I disagree with how you've framed the argument. Your argument, as originally conveyed, was that black Americans have an annoying habit of blaming all their problems on whites. My original retort (through implication) was that black problems are frequently actually caused by racism, and I later edited that comment to convey an additional assertion, viz. that fighting to success is substantially harder for minorities in America. This is in contrast to the strawman claim that black people cannot succeed through hard work, which serves your argument (that black people should just work instead of complaining about racism) much better than acceptance of my argument does.

I do not disagree that black people should work to achieve success. But I do disagree that if everyone just shut up about racism, everything would be fixed. The fact is that there are visibly harmful remnants of past racism and visibly harmful manifestations of present racism that continue to affect minorities in this country and will not be solved without meaningful public dialogue; furthermore, I see the original post as a response to the unfortunate reality that many POCs see no remaining recourse for fighting oppression than to express violent emotion, whether that's manifested in rants, rioting, or terrorism.

Justice is not achieved by placing the burden of achieving equality on an oppressed minority. Justice is achieved when visible and invisible manifestations of oppression are alleviated; when the majority owns its mistakes, apologizes, and then fixes them; when the minority no longer has to work so much harder than the majority to achieve success that the gap between the average wealths of the historical majority and of the poorest minority is $105,774.

PS Crucial distinction: I never attacked your person. I said your position stemmed from misinformation, which was directly relevant to the argument. I never said you were misinformed about everything, nor that you were stupid, nor however you interpreted my (admittedly somewhat unnecessarily biting) claim.