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?
Just a coincidence that this shift happened as more white people started suffering from such addictions?
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.
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?
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.
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.