Bowl Leader
More Posts
Community Builder
Visual Storyteller
Additional Posts in The Safe Zone (for All) to talk Race
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
Bowl Leader
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
1. No, but It depends...
2b. It depends what you mean by "systemic" If systemic racism is defined as "racial disparities in outcome" then I would agree there is systemic racism. If you mean that the "system" itself is directly racist against POC then I don't think so. I think personal work ethic trumps any apparent racism there may be . Also there are disparities within racial groups as well: Jews vs White Protestants, Cuban vs. Guatamala, Indian vs. Nepali Africans vs. ADOS, Chinese vs. Cambodian. This doesn't mean there is apparent ethnic discrimination amongst different groups, there is more at play IMO than racism.
What are the other things you think are at play?
I posed this question because people seem to agree that the outcomes are problematic but for some reason can’t / don’t want to accept what causes this.
And when I talk about cause, I’m going back to all the educational resources and access to networks where actions taken in the past still have an impact on today.
The example I would give is if you have two people lined up for a race in front of a crowd...
The crowd holds back the Black person until the lead is borderline insurmountable and then let the Black person go. Technically, there’s nothing holding the Black person back now but expecting that head start to disappear on its own is unrealistic.
You could take the position of one shouldn’t be punished for the sins of the father.
But what happens if the father contributed to biased decision making or distribution of resources? Should we just not do anything?
These are the things I’d like to have a real discussion on.
Similar to protests, too often the response is shooting down people’s proposals to fix without providing a better alternative.
There could be whatever else going on in other groups but my comments are about what’s happening with Black people because that’s where I’ve had first hand experience and have spent more time exploring, so that’s where I’d like to keep the discussion.
In my opinion, for systemic racism to exist, in that the system is racist, the racism would have to affect all people of that race equally. Within the African American community there are large disparities in success, income and education between Africans, Carribeans and African Americans. If you look at ivy league schools, majority of the black people there are not ADOS. The system itself is not currently "racist" at least not anymore but it WAS racist and a lot of those racist policies of the past still affect a lot of black people today.
There are numerous factors at play, single parenthood, crime and violence and also culture. I'm African myself and although I went to one of the top public high schools in my state, a large number of the black people in my school underperformed simply because they did not care about school. A lack of interest in school is also a problem in the African American community, particularly poor black people.
I believe that there are certain remnants of the past that do continue to perpetuate inequalities of opportunity. But I don’t believe that it is as pernicious or systematic as often portrayed. It is also my beliefs that it often lies in systems often not considered like welfare.
My thinking NC was radically changed reading the book “White Guilt” by Shelby Steele. I would summarize his points here but I fear too much would be lost in creating a Cliff’s notes version.
I don't know what a snuck premise is but I'll say this. SES is highly intertwined with systemic racism ie remnants of policies and decisions disproportionately impacting a race. And cultural "norms" dictated by the majority are the same.
I'd argue that anyone who can't see that or at least understand the idea needs to push their thinking.
I'm not looking for anyone to prove any ideas to me. And I agree that words definitely matter. As far as these words go, I'm fine conceding whatever labels if people will focus that effort saved arguing on getting rid of these "remnants".
On the book, I'm going to look into it now to see what it's about.
Bowl Leader
From Moderator:
It appears EY1 is saying:
1. The system was racist
2. The system is no longer racist
3. There are still issues but in EY1 opinion the issue is not a racist system.
EY1 let us know if this is incorrect representation of your point
Others let us know do you agree with this?
I think with regards to points 1 and 2 that your definition of systemic racism is so broad that it hinders the ability to have an effective dialogue around it. There's never going to be a case where racism is going to equally impact every individual due to so many other variables. So you'll never going to be talking about exact equivalents.
I disagree with 2. There are so many examples of systemic racism that I feel you can look at with data. There are things such as people committing the same crime with similar records but the POC receiving historically receiving heavier sentences. You have things like black women being at a much higher disproportionate rate of dying during child birth than white women. There's data out here showing that these things occur points to systemic racism still being an issue in this country
For point 3, I feel like a lot of these issues are more closely related to systemic racism that you do but from following your definition that's more a semantics disagreement. We both agree that's there's an issue so what are things we can do fix what you consider "other issues" and what I consider "system racism". The more vague the language is the harder it makes it to establish valid parameters for the discussion. Saying I don't think it's x but it's due to y and then not actually working with others to rectify the issue (however you define semantically) is what causes the divide and frustration by people with the opposing viewpoints. This is what I've found a lot of people that take this stance do (Might not be how you are but it's what I've seen).