(07-17-2019, 08:31 AM)TrivialPursuit Wrote:

(07-16-2019, 07:15 PM)JaguarKick Wrote: This kind of comment is the worst kind of privilege.  They just need to get over it, right?  From you, who has never had to experience the same?  People in this country have been identified, classified, profiled, and treated differently due to race for 90% of this country's history, and your solution is "well, that's over now, so move on!"  It makes it sorta hard when there are still groups and people like the [BLEEP] PRESIDENT who continue to perpetuate [BLEEP] like this.  There were people holding signs of Obama in a noose and burning effigies of him when he was elected, but we should just ignore that, right?  Racism's dead though, yeah?  As late as the 80s, black people in this country couldn't secure loans to buy homes, resulting in systemic and racially motivated poverty that still has an effect today.  But hey, that shouldn't matter any more!

I don't think you could showcase any more clearly how out of touch you are.

Blah blah blah.

Black people couldn't secure loans because they couldn't afford them. The successful black people did just fine.

Moral of the story - if you want nice things - be successful - and no success has zero to do with skin color and everything to do with initiative and drive.

Example - I'm lazy and perfectly fine coasting through on my natural intelligence. But if I had initiative and drive and ambition I could easily be a millionaire. But who wants that hassle? I don't want to work every second of my life.

As one who has benefited greatly from luck, I can tell you for sure that initiative and drive are nice, but luck is even better.  Some people are born with advantages that others don't have.  They are surrounded by people who help them along the way, or they are born with wealth.  

Luck counts just as much as initiative and drive.  I'm sure I'm as lazy as you are.  But I can admit that luck played a huge role in where I am today.  In my case, I was born a white middle class male in the United States, in a family that valued education and had the resources to help me all along the way.  That's hitting the lottery.  I was lucky in a lot of other ways, too.  

Getting the right balance between equal opportunity on the one hand, and freedom and private property on the other hand, is hard.  Enlightened societies that value freedom and private property rights are always searching for that balance.  Because freedom doesn't mean you are born with an equal opportunity.  Remove all the barriers you want, but rich people will always have an advantage over poor people.  How much of an advantage we want them to have is the big question that plagues free market capitalistic enlightened societies.

Racism does exist, and it does make being black a disadvantage.  Now, the BIG question is, what to do about it.  I happen to think that most of our "remedies" for racism and discrimination are counter-productive.  But I would never deny that racism exists and is a disadvantage for people who are subject to it.

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