I claimed that systemic racism doesn’t exist today. There are no more Jim Crow laws today. You had to go back in history, generations back, to come up with an example of of systemic racism.
[/quote]
Actually, that’s not what you claimed. You claimed that:
[quote=harvey]
There is no such thing as systemic racism.
A group distinguished simply by its physical characteristics cannot be collectively guilty of racism or any other ethical transgression.
All acts of racism are committed by individuals – by people, not groups.
[/quote]
In that quote, you claim that there is no such thing as systemic racism. Your claim was not that there’s none today. You claim that all racism is committed by individuals.
More to the point, I didn’t bring up Jim Crow laws to rebut your supposed claim that systemic racism does not exist today. I brought them up as part of my rebuttal to this:
[quote=harvey]
The flaw in claims of “systemic” racism and “white privilege” is that they imply that a race is a group that collectively makes decisions and that all members should therefore be held accountable for those decisions.
[/quote]
As I said, it is not true that the claim that systemic racism implies that a race is a group that collectively makes decisions and that all members therefore should be held accountable for those actions. And I thoroughly explained why in my previous post, the Jim Crow example being just a part of that explanation.
[quote=harvey]
However the message from the American left has never been that government is responsible – it has always been that white people are responsible. This is why we have terms like “white privilege ” and the entire gamut of politically correct speech in all of its absurdities. [/quote]
“White privilege,” as I understand it, doesn’t mean that all white people are racist nor that all white people are responsible for the travails of minorities. It means that minorities suffer from racism while whites don’t (or at least that whites don’t nearly to the extent that minorities do), and that that racism has impeded the success of those minorities, to at least some degree. You might have a different understanding of “white privilege” than I do, but surely you don’t argue that whites have suffered from racism as much as minorities.
In my opinion, it’s of little consequence what’s happened to minorities in the past and who’s responsible for it. It is of great consequence what happens to them henceforth. If minorities were, on average, as financially successful as whites, the whole country would be better off (financially). So it’s valuable for us to do what we can to help them get there. If they want to. In my opinion, the main impediment to the success of many subcultures in America (both minority and white) is their culture. If they prefer to keep the culture that they have and be relatively unsuccessful, that’s fine with me. But if they want to be more financially successful, I think they need to change their culture. And I think we should help them with that, if we can.
