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Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
I kinda remember a prominent BLM march in London a bit over a year ago when the entire world screamed about the same thing for the first time in history.
Seems monumentally stupid to ignore that. Whether or not they're right (and history says they are), ignoring the raw power of that human sentiment can't lead to good things.
A big problem with understanding racism, IMO, is the word privilege connotes some bonus advantage, when in reality it's a lack of a bunch of tiny disadvantages.
Your language of "treating them as victims" is loaded AF. When, at least in the US, many, many statistics show that supposedly historical racism has left dramatic marks on modern life, then the word victim is at least somewhat appropriate. The widespread, systemic racism in just home ownership in the US is stark. The systematic, intentional criminalization of black culture to strip away the right to vote from "felons" is not hyperbolic. The people who wrote the laws that accomplish this have confessed to their insidious racist intent, and the laws are still being enforced.
So obviously treating an individual like they're a victim of society is problematic, but it's also problematic to look at this evidence and NOT say that black people as a group are still being victimized by racist laws. At least... that's my take on it.
The problem for me is when we say that black people are victims, and treat them differently to white people. The term "white privilege" really hits this nerve. It ignores individual circumstances and puts everyone in a box based on their skin colour. White people all around the world suffer from a lack of privilege too. But when we talk of "white privilege" we basically dismiss those who are white and live in poverty, or suffer from some form of discrimination.
I know we'll never agree on this, and I think that's largely a result of where we live. It seems that racism is a much bigger problem in USA than the UK. There are people who want to make racism an equal problem in the UK, but that isn't the case. And black people are not deprived of opportunity in USA, as best I can tell. There was recently a black president, there are many successful black sports stars and musicians, there don't appear to be barriers other than poverty, which can affect anyone of any colour. I appreciate black people are more likely to live in poverty than white people, in USA, and probably UK too, but that isn't necessarily institutional racism. It's possible, and this is just me speculating in an effort to find non-racist reasons for it, that those whose ancestors come from the country they live in, are better off due to the settled nature of their ancestors. Many black people are first, second or third generation immigrants. Most white people have ancestry dating back a century or more. This gives those settled people a natural advantage that isn't due to racism.
I know USA has laws in place that are racist, we've talked about this in the past. That clearly needs to change. We don't have that problem in the UK, and that probably skews my opinion on this.
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