LBJ: "If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he ..."

[Rilgin]

113. Again no specifics

I do read your posts. What I have noticed is what I put in my post. If I read you right you would like society to address social disparities before class disparities. You seem to acknowledge that is what you want. You also seem to think that no matter what if race is not addressed you will be less off. That is your words. I would just like to hear one statement listing exactly the disparities and specific solutions you would propose to eliminate them that does not involve fixing our economic system. What system based racial disparities are left if you eliminate disparities in the class system. I would love to see just one example of what you would want that is more than people being treated fairly by society.

BTW, your post is somewhat slippery. I did not originate the term past grievances. You did. YOU (emphasis added) used the word "past grievances" in saying what was left if we fixed class problems. Not me. Again read that closely you, not me. Take responsibility for your own words when someone asks YOU what YOU mean when YOU say that.

Historically, black people (not you personally) faced slavery, jim crow, redlining and other problems. There were horrible and had system support. But lots of races have faced societal imposed or supported problems. My ancestors were imprisoned, made to work, starved and some were then killed in this century alone. Historically, my race has been outcast and mistreated for centuries and this continues today in many parts of the world. Meanwhile, my relatives had nothing to do with what was happening here to black people since they were not in the US. Do you think social and distributional priorities in the US where I am now a citizen should be based on what happened to our ancestors? How do you judge slavery and jim crow versus work camps and the gas chamber if whats important is past grievances against the world? Then there are all the sh** that has happened to ancestors of all races historically. Personally, I would rather address present problems that affect all living individuals. Otherwise you sound like my grandfather who thinks my race is the only race that has faced genocide and should be treated as special by society. He closes his ears when I point him to Cambodia and Algeria because he like you wants only to see his situation as unique and special.

Ultimately, I respect your dedication to your issue. However, I just find it limiting to see race problems as fundamental and unchanging. Generations change as do attitudes to others. The current generation is more racially mixed than the last one. Your problems are not the problems facing your ancestors.

Further, I think racial impacts are more capable of solution if treated as a symptom of a greater system problem to the fullest extent possible. Civil rights laws ban discrimination on race, not just one race. These are good laws. I think civil rights and economic justice for all people are better causes than single race causes.

To give you one pertinent example. Statistically, the criminal justice system imposed longer sentences for crack possession than cocaine for no reason. More black people are imprisoned and for longer sentences than white violators of drug laws. There are probably also racial targeting issues that also result in this disparity. I look at this and think the problem and solution is not in the racial disparity, the solution is the drug laws themselves. My answer is not to fix the relative sentences so white cocaine violators have longer sentences or crack users less or try to make sure police do not target black people for drug crimes in proportions greater than white people. I would make drugs not a criminal matter; not imprison anyone. If you did not imprison people for drugs, the race problem would be irrelevant in drug sentencing. Dealing with race would leave people still in jail although in equal proportions.