We're approaching things in different ways, that's for sure. I don't get these arguments you're making wherein equality would mean everyone would have a 30% unemployment rate, everyone would be pulled over for bullshit reasons, everyone would get locked up in vast numbers, and everyone would have trouble getting housing, healthcare, die earlier, etc. And I don't see more money for cops as a social good or an individual good for me, I see it as another way I'm less safe and less free.
To me, unemployment is not an immutable burden to be fairly divided among all races; it should be abolished, illegal. I don't want just an end to housing discrimination, I want an end to landlordism; I don't just want an end to housing loan discrimination, I want an end to bank power. I would like to get there from here, and racism is standing in my way and in the way of not just people of color (of course) but also the large number of people, a majority in this country, who are told they've got it made cause their skin is the approved color or their language is the dominant language. (And jack, if you can't find a job, it's your personal fault.)
I don't mean this abstractly, racism--racist ideas and racist actions--wreck solidarity, leave rifts that are exploited by the boss and his politicians, and are used in a million ways to block needed reforms and confuse white people out of taking radical action. I already gave some examples on healthcare. In Florida, racist policies were used to disenfranchise *every* Democratic voter, not just those who were illegally taken off the rolls or those who were legally excluded. What about the wars--the racist illusions of white people allowed this happen; a whole lot of those sent will come home destroyed by the experience. Some benefits.
Earlier I noted the seven year life expectancy difference between blacks and whites in the U.S. Me, I think it calls for UN intervention, but we're probably going to have to fight it ourselves. Should we fight it on a moral basis only, or also on the basis that racism--the racist illusions and accompanying actions of white people--is a scam that's allowing the rich to screw the vast majority of us, of all colors, out of our birthright of freedom and the fruit of our labor?
There's an unfortunate side effect that I've seen in feminist organizing: men react to learning of the shitty position of women by deciding that they as men have nothing to complain about, and then they try to 'help' us from what they imagine to be their position of great power and privilege. Not only is this irritating and condescending, it's wrong. Most of these guys have no power and little privilege in reality--but somehow they get into this tortured guilt trip which is unhelpful, to say the least. They could help feminism most by helping get their class enemies off all of our necks, which is what we tell them. I think something similar sometimes happens with race. As Shirley Chisholm said to white women who asked how they could 'help' (paraphrase) 'first you must free yourself from the illusion that you are now free.'
I hope this helps explain where I'm coming from a bit more.
Jenny Brown
>>if white people live in our society, something that makes our society
>>worse off makes whites worse off.
>>
>>Miles
>
>If wealthy people live in our society, something that makes our society
>worse off makes wealthy people worse off.
>
>Same logic. Does it make any sense? Why is your statement true for white
>people but not for the wealthy?
>
>John Thornton
Well, there is the factor that the wealthy account for around 1% of our society and euro-Americans account for the majority of it.