zlacker

Why do we have to talk about everything bad before we talk about one thing that's bad, especially when it comes to black people? Why, when the aftereffects of American slavery are being discussed, is there always somebody who says that we have to talk about Middle Eastern and African slavery first?

Are the only important problems universal ones?

>>pessim+(OP)
No but it comes off as disingenuous because people talk about a lot of ill in the US without getting the level of outrage that this topic brings, rampant inequality, corporate stranglehold of the government and horrible work conditions for many people, regardless of the color of their skin. So when someone says, lets talk about more than this problem, they get sidelined and everything else is pushed further to the back burner.

>>pessim+(OP)
> Why do we have to talk about everything bad before we talk about one thing that's bad

You're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying we have to fix everything at once. I'm saying that the "one thing that's bad" is not racism; racism is just one particular way the root problem manifests itself. The root of the problem is corruption: people in positions of public trust misusing the power they are granted to indulge their personal prejudices, whatever they are, instead of serving the public. Even if you could wave a magic wand and remove all racism from the world forever, that wouldn't fix the corruption problem; corrupt people in power would just find different excuses for violating people's rights. You have to fix the corruption.

And you won't fix corruption by focusing on one particular prejudice that the corrupt people happen to have, even if historically it has been the most common one (which, btw, I'm not sure is actually true--I think religious prejudice is at least as common historically if not more so--but I'm willing to assume it is for the sake of this discussion). The problem is not the particular prejudice the corrupt people have; the problem is that corrupt people are in power in the first place.

>>pessim+(OP)
>...Why do we have to talk about everything bad before we talk about one thing that's bad, especially when it comes to black people?

Sanitizing discussions of race is something people have always done when it comes to Afrian-Americans. Notice the progression goes from African-Americans -> Systematic Inequality of Treatment -> Systematic Violations of Basic Human Rights -> Everybody. The intersection between race and power in this country is textbook White Fragility, so the go-to move is to "All-Lives-Matter" it

>>x86_64+0z
> the go-to move is to "All-Lives-Matter" it

No the "go-to move" is to refuse to realize that we as a society have been trying to "fix" racism for decades now (arguably centuries), and it's not helping. The very people all the landmark civil rights laws and court decisions were supposed to help are worse off now than they were in the 1960s when those laws were passed.

So instead of continuing to do this not-working thing, maybe we should ask whether the root problem is something else, and work on fixing that instead.

>>x86_64+0z
Because it is the correct approach. There is no white fragility.