This is the worst of racism. The next time a white HNer tells PoC to just turn the other cheek toward racist words, point them to this. Racist attitudes are what enable horrific crimes against blacks, such as these.
Every time I read someone talk about a SJW (social justice warrior) somewhere I cringe thinking about what my country will be like in 10 years if not sooner. People seriously think SJWs and political correctness are our actual problems as if things are fine otherwise.
There are a lot of good people here but there are a lot of people with no empathy and little knowledge and then about 200 million people who just do not care as long as the power and internet stay on and they are left alone.
But this requires some curiosity and interest in learning which biggest and racists might not have. And frankly it is hard to change people's mind when you are calling them names. People tend not to listen to people they don't like.
We also have to accept that racism goes both ways, it is just that white racism has much more severe consequences for black than the other way around. But I believe it helps maintain white racism to some degree.
I am not American, so I can comment on this as an outsider, and I can very clearly see that many American blacks have a big issue with whites. It is hard to win over whites if they only have bad experiences with blacks and also see no point in educating themselves on the issue.
I am not passing out blame. I am just saying, everybody can contribute to making racism a thing of the past. The ones who have to do the most are whites.
I'd also highly recommend everyone take an Implicit Bias test or two - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html Your results might surprise you.
Wouldn't most minorities prefer to live in a world where people often say insensitive or prejudiced things, but the legal system does not enact violence against them based on their minority status?
Have we conclusively proved that altering speech patterns and day to day expressions of opinion changes the likelihood of state violence against a particular group?
I intuitively feel that a tremendous amount of consciousness raising has happened during my lifetime, but the vicious prison sentences haven't changed much. The massive inequity in legal outcomes continues to be a topic of discussion in the press, and I know people who work for The Innocence Project who feel things are better, but not nearly better enough.
I am concerned that we might be engaged in placebo-like or symptom treating behavior, while the underlying disease goes unaddressed.
Prisons systems and welfare programs exist the way they do in the US mostly because of racism. If we were a country that all looked similar, we wouldn't be able to see our fellow humans treated this way. But, when it's someone that doesn't look like me? Sure, they look dangerous. Lock them up. Or, sure, they look lazy. Don't give them 'free stuff.'