I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic racism - here's a great starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q. She also wrote the book "White Fragility".
Thinking about that, I'm just wondering how different it would be if one of those people who mistook the employee for the CEO instead turned to the CEO and said "I'm sorry, please excuse me for the instance of racism I just perpetrated against you, I promise it won't happen again." I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not. We can't address them if we're so embarrassed by their existence as to pretend they don't exist.
Anti-racism is about taking on the powers and material structures that reproduce racism in our society to put an end to that reproduction. It’s what the multiracial coalition is doing right now, in the streets, forcing changes to laws and policing.
All of this has little to do with your boss paying someone to lecture you about why you’re bad/biased/ignorant. In fact, it’s contrary to anti-racism, because it positions your boss, who controls your life and buys her classes, as the arbiter of what is and isn’t racism.
People would be better off studying the life and work of Fred Hampton.
From my limited understanding of this position, it sounds like the goal is a dismantling of police and courts which form the backbone of a civil rule of law society.
To expand on the bit about Social Security, farmworkers were excluded, since farmworkers tend to be not white. It was a nice sneaky way to be racist without coming out and doing so explicitly.
* GI Bill: adopted in 1944, expired in 1956.
* Social Security: adopted in 1935, unclear what the impacts were at the time. Unclear what the impacts are today.
* Redlining: created in 1934, illegal since 1977.
As an immigrant that landed in US post 2000 with $1000 to my name and a tenuous F1 situation, all this sounds like ancient history. Much more stringent appear, in no particular order and not pretending to be exhaustive:
* the whole F1/H1B situation, which depresses the domestic labor market in technical jobs, especially software, but also research at large
* global competition, especially with China
* the over financialization of the economy
* the profits accumulating at the very top since the 2008 Great Recession
* the explosion of real estate market in big cities, way above what we pretend the inflation rate is
* manufacturing decline
* offshoring of entire industries to East Asia
* right now, the covid19 lockdowns which are destroying the service economy, which was supposed to be the future of jobs
* the decimation of small business America due to same covid19 lockdowns.
* specifically for the black community, the lack of academic achievement
* the rise of the gig economy and Amazon warehouse jobs
* the opioid, homelessness and suicide crisis
* the obesity crisis, and the related food deserts
Again, not a young black guy or gal. But if I'd were, there'd be 10 high priority items on my worry list before I'd get to the Civil Rights Era. As a nation we seem to have abandoned the middle and working class of all colors. The public discourse is obsessed with Instagram influencers and race histories half a century old if not older, sometimes much older.