* 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.
Regardless of the obstacles faced in the second half (which are still more numerous than the competition's), can't you understand why runners would still look back at that first half to explain their fatigue, anger, and feelings of injustice? Particularly when looking ahead and thinking, "Oh God, this crap /again/??"
The marathon in this example actually spans multiple generations, but even the horrible segregation of the 50's was experienced first hand by the parents of black people still in the workforce today.
Sounds like you came into the race halfway through. As an immigrant you're still facing those unfair obstacles in front of you, but just remember that you don't have the fatigue of carrying the baggage from the first half.
A more apt analogy may be a marathon where there are bystanders who latch on to half of the runners and keep telling them, "you cannot make it, you need us to help you, the race is unfair".
Well, it's not. In living memory:
>The wealth of black Americans was halved by the 2008 financial crisis, in part because of predatory lending practices which specifically targeted them by race and misrepresented their creditworthiness
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/01/24/t...
>A million black farming families essentially had their wealth-producing land stolen from them: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/this-la...
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/losing-ground/
>Multiple black activists pushing for more advantageous policy have been imprisoned and assassinated, with allegedly some incidents as recent as the last few years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luth....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/puzzling-number-men-tie...
>Black students have become subject to levels of segregation - and associated disparities in educational quality - at levels rivalling those of pre-Brown v Board America
https://www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-full-text
https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation
>Because many black workers were exempt from the initial impementation of Social Security and the GI Bill, their children (Silent Gen and Baby Boomers, currently in the process of passing on their inheritances) and grandchildren (Gen X and Millennials) are suffering the consequences in lost wealth-building opportunities
>Countless black Americans have suffered from poor healthcare based on apathy and stereotypes
https://features.propublica.org/diabetes-amputations/black-a...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/black-american...
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/02/20/why-are-black-women...
>Black Americans have watched a completely different and profoundly more compassionate response to the white people affected by the opioid epidemic than they experienced in the crack/cocaine epidemic
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/crack-h...
https://thewitnessbcc.com/crack-epidemic-opioid-crisis-race-...
>Marijuana, long a a drug whose sale and use was the pretext for the overpolicing of black communities, and which provided off-the-record income for many marginalized from the mainstream economy, was legalized in several states, under schemes that made sure that the overwhelming majority of those who profited were white.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/22/marijuana-...
https://qz.com/1194143/even-after-legalization-black-america...
https://psmag.com/economics/the-green-rush-is-too-white-hood...
>Historical atrocities were buried until after those afflicted were unable to see justice in their lifetimes
https://tulsa.okstate.edu/news/shedding-light-local-history-...
And, of course, bare-naked discrimination exists across aspects of American life, including employment, compensation, educational opportunity, freedom of movement, criminal justice, real estate, and on and on and on. When these and many more injustices were not directly impactful, they served as poignant examples of the extreme apathy, if not antipathy, American society has had for black Americans. On top of it all, black Americans still live under the specter of police departments nationwide, which have been allegedly infiltrated by white supremacist organizations, and which assuredly indoctrinate officers with racist training and policy, and root out anti-racist individuals.
I'll leave you with
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/05/29/...
a response to Ta-Nehisi Coates' seminal work, The Case For Reparations (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-cas...), which reopened the intellectual debate on racial justice with a focus on the subject above: racial injustice affecting living black Americans, however rooted it may be in the events of 50-60-70-150 years ago.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/crack-h....
https://thewitnessbcc.com/crack-epidemic-opioid-crisis-race-....
Great post and you brought up a few things I hadn't considered. Just curious about this one though. America in general has gradually shifted towards a view that drug addicts are sick people that need help. The shift was already taking place before opioids and methamphetamine addiction reached epidemic levels. How much of an impact do you think systemic racism had on the response to the opioid epidemic and how much can just be attributed to the fact that we have gotten smarter about drug addiction in general?
I'm not super educated on the opioid epidemic, but is there evidence that even now the resources allocated for a response are being distributed unfairly?
Everybody is a product of the past. Hell, Anglo-Saxon’s are still worse off then Normans in the UK 1000 year after William the Conqueror.
There are people who never lived under communism who have to deal with the stain and prejudice of being an Ossi in modern Germany.
Just a coincidence that this shift happened as more white people started suffering from such addictions?
Honestly to make such a post, one would have disregard network effects and intergenerational wealth transfer to a malicious level.
Most of society now empathizes with drug addiction because its hit white society a lot and the race of users can't be used as a political scapegoat. As long as you're white, the richer you are, the less likely you are to go to jail for it. Rehab is for rich people.
We haven't gotten smarter about drug addiction in general, which is why we have the largest prison population in the world.
> is there evidence that even now the resources allocated for a response are being distributed unfairly?
Given a huge percentage of the "response" is police and prisons, and police and prisons dramatically discriminate against people by race, yes.
Legalization and decriminalization of Marijuana is still a relatively recent phenomenon. It seems to me like it will eventually get legalized by the federal government. If that happens, wouldn't we expect this to get better? The right thing to do would be to release everyone that was in jailed on marijuana related charges as long as they weren't also convicted of something more serious (like violence). Maybe I'm being too optimistic.
I think a lot of Americans realize how insane it is that we jail more people than any other country. While progress is always slow, it seems like we're hearing more politicians talk about doing something about it.
https://1776unites.com/featured-essays/the-1619-project-perp...
In response someone posted about a load of laws, which it turns out are all historic.
They didn't say intergenerational wealth transfer (which is a poor-person issue not a race issue per se - though it has a non-representative racial profile for sure).
I'm not sure what you're suggesting with "network effects", presumably people in established positions of power can maintain a discriminatory hold on those allowed to join the group?
Lots of people in the middle income brackets seem no worse off than other people too.
Any sources to support this, that equally wealthy people go to jail in higher proportions - for the same [drug] crime - if they're non-white?
What are your thoughts on that, because that's A LOT of immigrants
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2018/02/the-race-g...
The probability of being jailed for more than a year is over 20% for the poorest 20% of Blacks, and just over 10% for the poorest 20% of whites.
Those are both related to a history of redlining. A huge factor in the wealth gap is due a lack of home ownership. Even now, real estate agents steer black customers away from the neighborhoods with good schools: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-...
If someone's grandparents were forced to live in shitty housing and were never able to own their own home, that puts the next couple generations at a disadvantage. Most people who are able to afford a down payment on a home get financial assistance from their families. If one generation cannot help with that down payment, the next one sure as hell won't.
That point about the black academic gap is quite silly, because you're either ignoring or unaware of the fact that black students are punished more than white students for similar infractions in school: https://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/at-school-it...
I could go on all day finding more examples of other discrepancies that are current.
> 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.
Yes, my family did that too. However, we are not black, and as a result, we didn't have to put up with banks refusing to give us a mortgage when we wanted to move to a wealthy suburb that had excellent public schools.
You came in on a student visa? That means you had a certain amount of social capital to rely on in your home country. How many people in your original country were too poor to apply for even an F1 visa and shoot for a richer life in America? Your experience is not remotely analogous to the continuing problems of racial discrimination faced by black Americans. You have absolutely not faced the same problems with building up intergenerational social capital that they have. My family made it out of China, but millions of Chinese peasants in the rural countryside, even if they are equally talented and hardworking as my family, will never have the chance. They're too far behind. That's why I chose to focus on the historical legislation. You may think that it doesn't matter, black people should've pulled themselves up by their bootstraps by now, but it doesn't matter if they lack the same headstart.
Obviously the impact of the later is felt more if a particular grouping by skin colour are poorer, but the problem and solution are different to if the cause of this is directly racism (assuming our aim is justice for all regardless of skin colour; that's certainly my aim).
I'm not personally too concerned with complete wealth equality (I'd probably go for heavily garnishing large wages). For example, in the UK I gather immigrants contribute more to taxes than the average; suggesting they fit in middle-income brackets (not super wealthy, not abjectly poor; on average). Penalising immigrants for succeeding would be harsh, and wouldn't account for the massive biasing of averages for the endemic population through inherited wealth.
>He concludes, “[T]hese disparities are primarily driven by our racialized class system. Therefore, the most effective criminal justice reform may be an egalitarian economic program aimed at flattening the material differences between the classes.” In other words, while building a more progressive economy won’t end the horrors of racism, it may be the pathway to a less discriminatory criminal justice system. //
That appears to closely match my position.