See, here is the thing with me. I've taken a deep breath, cranked some Motorhead and took a step back.

Let's look at this article and the author. Here is the Author's bio. This guy writes race-related clickbait. Here is one of his books. Look! A White! Now, look at the guy's history; take a look at his Amazon Author page. I'll wait. I have no idea on the guy's family life, his upbringing or anything but he went to some damn fine fancy schools there. He went to Yale, which is a privilege neither I nor any of my friends would ever be given.

Now, to my frustration. Here we have some jackass who gets to go to Yale telling my friends and I that we are bad people because we did not win the birth lottery that put us in the top 10%. I did not choose my parents, nor did he, nor did you. I've broken off friendships with people less fixated on race than Mr. Yancy. There is only one privilege in this world: that is class/money/wealth however you want to define it. Going to Yale puts you in a social class far above mine, easily into the 5%er class. Having money puts you in a social class above mine. Hell, we want to go full bonkers and progressive stack here, having two parents raise you puts you in a social class above many people any more.

If we want to have a talk on how black people in the USA have been systematically shit upon time and time and time and time again, we can start on how black men who fought for the freedom of the USA in WWII were treated like shit and progress to Jim Crow and that inter-racial marriages were not exactly legal until 1955. It's not like this is the first time that the government used the army to crush poor people fighting back Hell it is not even the last. Sorry for all the shitty wikipedia articles, but if anything they sanitize a lot of this garbage.

So, my anger is that articles like this do nothing to fix anything other than to generate controversy and web clicks. Welfare is not working to keep poor families together which deepens the poverty cycle. FROM 19FUCKING83 NY Times a liberal (albeit establishment) paper! You want to really, REALLY help black men keep their families in tack and work to at lest stop the skid of poverty in this country? End the war on drugs. Turn drug policy from criminal to medical. White and black people all smoke weed yet the dark skinned fellas end up in jail. Stanford Text History here. If you end up in jail you don't go to school, don't get a job, and get exposed to other criminals who now become your friend structure. The jobs you do get barely pay the bills, and it is legal to not rent to convicts further amplifying the cycle. Where is Mr. Yancy's papers getting white people guilty enough to end this idiotic war on drugs? I'd support him if he did.

This country has a history of treating people like shit. The Irish were shit upon, the Italians were shit upon, the Germans were shit upon, now its the Mexican's turn. Hell, the French Catholics were treated like crap when they fled Canada! And then we get into the modern influxes of Russians, Chaldeans, Muslims, Arabs and everyone else who is buying the song and dance about the USA being the land of milk and honey. My hope for the internet and places like Hubski, and even Facebook and Reddit fer fecks sake, is that people get into discussions over shit that does not matter. Movies, music, video games, books, sports, etc. Then you find out that the person you have been talking to is <other> and that interaction humanizes someone that maybe you were raised to treat poorly. Playing video games online with an Arab Muslim will do more to fix racism than a million papers like this. Watching sports in a bar rooting for a basketball team of black guys is doing more to tamp down racism here than any government program you can think of. Articles like this are not going to bring people together; they may have the opposite impact. One of the key tenants of cults is that they segregate themselves, this segregation then radicalizes them and pits them against the outsiders. Want to know why the extremely religious hate the internet? (hint, can't have the kiddies finding out that the blacks and the gays are human beings just like them.)

If I win the lottery I'd love to set up a fund that takes 20 inner city black men and have them meet 20 rural white redneck dudes and have them all compare notes for a few hours. These kids would get the chance to see that they are both fucked: their families are falling apart, the job prospects all suck, the doors that lead to college are slamming shut, those who go to college end up with a ton of debt and shaky job prospects, the unions that used to train our tradespeople are barely hanging on, entry level factory work was shipped overseas and both communities are wracked over by despair, poor health and serious drug and alcohol abuse problems. Does that describe South Chicago? Rural Kentucky? When you have two groups of people who don't like each other that is one thing; divide and distract is a legitimate strategy to win wars. To merge them into one group of people who just had their worldviews upturned and are now just a bit pissed off? That would be fun to watch.

Articles like this, and hell Fox News, MSNBC, Daily Kos, Breibart, Drudge, Democracy Now! all of them, are in my opinion trying to capture and segregate an audience. Reality (not truth,that is something different) no longer matters. We are losing out empathy to each other in self-selected filter bubbles that cater to our biases and make us feel good about ourselves, and fuck those other guys we got ours. KB said something in another thread that you cannot talk anymore without being shouted down. If there is anyone out there that still gives a shit, that is how you kill a nation and end a democracy. We have real, big, problems in this world, and if we are going to fix them we are going to have to work with people we may not like, who look different than us, go to different churches etc. I'd like to think we are better than this, but some days...