Finally, diversity of ideas, and not diversity of skin color.
Diversity is both of these things. It is true that you can have more diversity in a room of people of one race than a room of people of all different races, but it's more common that you will find diversity across lines like race, gender, age, etc.
Since it's clear that diversity without race differences can exist, but diversity without different ideas can't exist, then why care about race at all?
You've got Black centre-rightists like me, Far Rightists like Clarence Thomas, Barack Obama in the middle, and quite a range of voices on the Left - I'll pick Ta-Nehisi Coates as a very talented example over there.
I think it's fair to say that ideas/viewpoints are very important, but to ignore the reality of groups of people frequently targeted is silly.
He clearly isn’t.
That is fucking terrifying and most centrality undesirable, unless you mean equality of opportunity, then absolutely. But equality of outcome is the worst possible thing anyone could ever strive for.
Yes. Yes. This is what the position is. Don't let anyone ever try to tell you otherwise.
There is no equality of opportunity for groups of people that have had generation after generation of systemic oppression, exclusion and poverty.
You don't do that to an entire subculture of people for hundreds of years, and then think you can snap your fingers and say "Okay cool, segregation is over so now we all have equal opportunity!"
There is so much that goes into being a successful person that is subtle, environmental, learned through exposure, enabled by connections and passed down through generations. Same goes for the flipside which is called the cycle of poverty.
There's a lot of damage that needs to be undone, which will take active investment on behalf of society at large to accomplish.
I'm too tired to write out an essay on the history of racism in the US and why that history is still a massive burden on the descendants of those people today. This information is widely available if you genuinely want to understand.
What you don't think there are white kids with single moms? Or white kids that had dads that beat them? Or white kids that were molested? Or white kids that got harassed by police? Or white kids that were told to give up, or that they wouldn't amount to anything?
Your view of white people is completely detached from reality. Anyone who has been through adversity (most people), can empathize with anyone else who has gone through adversity even if the circumstances of that adversity weren't exactly the same.
edit: hm, while I'm not a fan of the "systemic racism" thing, depicting it as a "boogie man in the sky" does not make you look like prone to really open to understand adversity of others. I'm sure you decided that "they are just complaining, they don't know "real adversity"" while you have no idea what it is really like.
Saying you will take hypothetical action is easy, but all that matters is what you've actually done and are doing.
If you haven't taken any substantial action to date then perhaps consider that may be a sign that you are not as motivated and understanding about the oppression of others as your initial comment may have indicated.
If on the other hand you have been involved in a significant amount of anti-racist activism that's genuinely awesome.
This is no different than when someone claims God is real, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not the person denying the existence of God.
What you’re doing is essentially demanding I prove God doesn’t exist.
Do you see how those two statements strongly contradict one another?
Anyway, if your position is genuinely that systemic racism doesn't exist, given all the information you have access to in this day, then I don't think there's any evidence I could show you that would ever sway you. That said, it's worth a shot, here's a tiny grain of sand on the nearly infinite beach of facts supporting the continued existence of racism - people with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a callback for a job interview.[1]
Nope, no contradiction at all. You can have adversity and not have systemic racism. I don’t have the foggiest clue how you can think that is a contradiction.
> people with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a callback for a job interview.[1]
Fair enough, but how is this remotely “systemic”? Do you really think there are company policies that promote this? Or is this individual (I.e. not systemic) biases?
Unless the company policy is to prefer the resumes with white sounding names then I don’t see how this is systemic.
"That's ok when WE do it".