> Although I got off the boat some 27 years
> ago, I honestly do not see those structural racist
> norms that you mention - just I do not see god, jesus,
> angels and so on. All I see is people making choices
> and expressing opinions - and not that many of those
> who I've met can be considered racist in any
> meaningful way.
For the sake of an argument, think of it this way:
You are a yet-to-be-born, but discerning, enlightened, self-interested individual. God lays it out for you: You are going to be born today somewhere in the U.S. and you have a 13% chance of being born Black. God is not telling you location, parents' socio-economic status, educational level, etc. You can observe life as is in the U.S. now, so you now exactly what being Black entails. What you don't know is your race and how you'll do in the future as an individual.
Then God asks you to state an amount of social power that you'd want to have as an honest compensation for the possible disadvantage of being born Black vis-a-vis being the median American (i.e. white) today. God is an egalitarian and wants to even things out. If there's no disadvantage to being born Black, then you can pick zero. If you see an advantage to being born Black, you can choose a negative number (that would be an amount of social power that would be subtracted from your lot to start with). If you prefer, you can think of social power as "opportunities" or "political power" or "capital" or "wealth" or "money." Up to you. Also, in a twist, God also asks you to guess an average of the figures that you think other 300 million yet-to-be-born Americans would honestly pick in response to same question above.
A rough measure of the current social cost of structural racism against Blacks in the U.S. would be that average figure times 39 million.
Now, are you telling us that, in answer to the first question, given that you don't see any inherent, structural, inherited social disadvantage to being Black (or perhaps even see an advantage), you'd choose zero (or a negative number)? How close would your answer to the second question be compared to the previous figure? Why?
Later Wojtek wrote:
> To be more specific, based on my 27 years of
> observations of this country I came to the conclusion
> that the poor living conditions of many (but not all)
> Blacks in this country are a matter of personal
> choices or lack of them rather than institutional
> rules that keep that population from achieving better
> living conditions. By individual choices I understand
> not only the life styles that people espouse, but also
> the choices that do not make e.g. choice not to get
> education, as well as choices of the parents regarding
> their children.
The choices that your parents already made are not part of the structure that constrains or enables your own individual choices? The choices that your peers currently make don't amount to objective forces outside of you limiting or enabling your individual choices? I'd think so.