"The incessant focus on identity politics and oppression olympics is extremely cancerous"
Yes, instead of dealing with race-related issues, which you admit exist, let's just tell the people who suffer that their POV is cancerous and they should shut up. That should fix things. -_-
I think he has a point and you aren't giving him a fair go.
I've been hurt by a few women in my life. If I focused on those events in my life I would probably be a huge misogynist. Instead I was lucky to be given the good advice to let it go. I'm a little more guarded now is all.
Of course the opposite approach is usually taken by the PC crowd. They dwell on the issues. And it causes a lot of damage.
Now where I disagree with the parent is I think the article was quite good and balanced and not your typical PC article.
To suggest that people should be absolutely silent and not contribute to the discourse that leads to policies that affect their lives is morally abhorrent. Ask them to weight their opinions, sure but telling them to shut up is absurd.
For example, you don't have to have been poor to contribute solve poverty.
You DO need a level of understanding and context, though. You don't have to be poor to contribute to solving poverty, but you do need to have experience with poor neighborhoods to know what the pertinent issues are and to get a more wholesome understanding of the predictament of the affected. I wouldn't expect anyone who's never stepped into a neighborhood with Section 8 housing to know the whole story enough to come up with any substantive solutions, and the same applies for racial issues, as well. If you don't know the stories of people who experience them and fail to properly evaluate their worldview, any opinions you have on the matter are based on faulty reasoning and can't truly be taken seriously.
Once you start talking about systemic racism vs the rise of single-motherhood and destruction of the family and glorification of violence within the black communities you're called a racist and the discussion stops there.
There's no room for legitimate discussion and therefore nothing improves and nothing gets better, and in fact things get worse.
How is this at all relevant to the topic at hand? Why does every black individual have to account for the cultural and socioeconomic complexities of being born into a low income black neighborhood? Nobody needs a lecture on the struggles of the black community when they're talking about their own experiences and interactions in silicon valley. I don't think you're racist, and I'm sympathetic to the argument that the term "racist" is sometimes abused to the effect of shutting down discussion, but it's not surprising that someone might think you're racist if your response to racially charged interview questions is to bring up black single mothers and the glorification of violence in rap music.
He clearly intended this to invoke a much wider discussion about race and system racism at the end of his essay. That's what I'm responding to.
Discounting the value of any discussion about race because you believe we've reached good enough is not a conducive mentality to have towards just about anything, much less society. Things have improved over time because people weren't content with "good enough".