This article pisses me off. You'd have to be racist in the first place to admit that there isn't a serious divide in America. Or jawdroppingly ignorant of the world around you. In the deep south you can multiply that by a factor of ten. Here's my hometown You see Florida Boulevard? Want to take a guess at which side of that line has the better schools and hospitals? Less murders and soulcrushing poverty? What's worse is I have no idea where Pew got those numbers but down here the racism on both sides of that line are so obvious you can hardly breathe sometimes.
Sure. However, that's Baton Rouge. Are the same problems as prevalent in cities like Seattle Washington or Madison Wisconsin? What about some little town no one has ever heard of in a sparsely populated state like Montana or Wyoming? The article was about the average American and not every place in America has the same problems. If this article was about meth labs in America, you wouldn't hear me freaking out that a lot of problem don't see meth as an issue because I know that for the fortunate many, it's something they'll never have to deal with. Here? It's a problem.
I guess I'm just amazed (scared?) of that number. Half? Really? I'm sure in nicer places like Seattle, Washington or Nowhere, Nebraska everyone gets along fine but is half of White America really so daft to think there isn't a ticking timebomb waiting to blow up on their doorsteps? I'm not just talking race, but poverty. Unfortunately, those two are closely related. It's not getting better, it's getting worse and half the freaking country couldn't be bothered?
Seattle PD has had the DoJ up their ass for continuous police brutality accusations for years. And just FYI about Oregon, another state in the US Pacific northwest, was settled largely as a white supremacist "utopia". What is "nice" code-word for?
It's really not that hard to believe when you think about it. America is a huge country and there are tons of gaps that influences people's worldviews. There's income gaps, age gaps, cultural gaps, regional gaps, on and on and on. If I were to guess about you, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're probably young, fairly well educated, and get most of your news and information off the internet. Something like this to you would seem fairly obvious. Now take a person who is in their mid to late 50s who is financially well off and still depends on television and newspapers to get their news and information. They're not going to see the same things as you see and they're not going to worry about the same things you worry about.
I'm just a late 20's college dropout and I'm worried I'll be pushing daisies before any real change happens in this country, if ever.
Woah! Woah! Woah! What's with that kind of talk? Are you serious? Things seem bleak, yes, sure. We have so much that has happened and so much that is going to continue to happen. We're not even going to talk about all of the great things that have happened since the civil rights era. Let's just look at today. Thanks to the internet, we have a wealth of information available to us that shines a light on the injustices of the world like never before. Political tom-fuckery, police brutality, race issues, drug issues, on and on and on. The reason you're seeing so many problems now and the reason it feels so overwhelming is because people are able to share more and more information, faster than ever possible. Knowing about the problems of the world and talking about them is the first step in solving them. Just look at what the internet has done to help bring to light about natural disasters around the world and how quickly support for these people has become a global, community effort. Part of the reason politicians and corporate whores are being such monsters right now is because they know this, so they're trying to double down while they can. Change is coming, change is inevitable, but change also needs to be slow. Abrupt change almost always ends in disaster. To be a part of that change, all you need to do is do right in your own backyard. It doesn't even have to be big or revolutionary. Find something that's a problem that you yourself personally care about and you yourself feel like you can contribute to and work on it. Actions, both positive and negative, causes ripples. By doing nothing, even on a small scale, you're sending a message to every fuckhead in power that they can do what they want.
I will try to remind myself of that. Well said.