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United States society has been problematically lumping people together based on skin toneWouldn't the best solution to this problem represent a rejection of such categorization? Wouldn't that necessarily exclude "X for Black People" in the same way it excludes "X for White People"? I'd like to live in a society where skin tone is no more important than hair color. Surely the best way to get there is to de-emphasize skin tone and therefore "blackness" and "whiteness"?
> What evidence do you have that this defines a cultural group (whatever that is)?
From tptacek in another post:
"Black culture ... was created artificially by kidnapping millions of people from the African content and stripping them of their cultures, family ties, and names, prompting those people to construct a new culture (while uniting them for another 100 years in the experience of apartheid and the civil rights movement). It's its own powerful, interesting thing."
I have a hard time disagreeing - it seems to be a distinct cultural group.
> Few people share your distinctions, so it's impractical
I disagree. I would say many people are able to make the distinction, and the lack of appropriate terminology to discuss it is universally frustrating.
> More importantly, it's impossible to distinguish criticism that is racist from that which is not.
It's quite easy. If you criticize a practice of cannibalizing visitors then it's reasonably clear the culture/practices are at issue, not the inherent traits of the people, unless of course we can prove some genetic predisposition to cannibalism.
> arguably non-racist but critical in order to encourage and spread racism
Yes doublespeak is a thing, but that doesn't mean frank discussion should be off the table.
> But being born in a neighborhood to a culture doesn't make you responsible
I would say that it exactly does. Who else can be responsible for a culture's practices than the people who maintain and perpetuate that culture?
> space for criticizing black people. Why is that important? How about we focus on the overwhelming problem, racism?
Because these are intrinsically related. As long as we can't disentangle the criticism and solutionizing of very real problems with black culture and ideology from racist bigotry against black people we'll never solve the problem. As long as black people are in a special class that's protected from serious criticism they can never be equal to the rest of us.