I'm late to seeing this but it needs a moderation response.
Whether you intended it that way or not, this amounts to trolling. It can lead to nothing but flamewars and ideological battles that are completely unwelcome here, so please don't do it again.
Racism in 2016, in Healthcare:
- Black scientists are systematically underfunded
- Black Women Are 40 Percent More Likely To Die From Breast Cancer Than White Women
- Facilities treating African-American population are associated with a decrease in the availability and use of surgical services and an increase in emergency visits
- Republican governors’ ongoing resistance to the optional Medicaid expansion disproportionately harms African-Americans
- minorities are seriously underrepresented in health care professions
In education,
- Black students trail White students with respect to educational access, achievement, and attainment
- White teachers teachers predisposed to have lower
expectations of Black students and a lack of respect for the students’ families and primary culture
- When racism is taught in schools, its often presented as an individual problem, not an institutional one. This leads many white Americans to believe that discrimination occurs in a vacuum
How about a country where a president is elected after a long campaign of denigrating immigrants, women, and people of color? A country where a movement needs to exist that states that black lives matter. A country where people will defend a cop who kills unarmed black people and is cleared of all wrong doing. A country that discriminates against hiring, providing housing opportunities for, and passing legislation to protect groups of people that start out behind because decades of racism has kept them out of job centers, meaningful employment, and economic stability.
Visit the south some time, talk to some black people that aren't as wealthy as you are, please just go out and get some perspective. I've always liked cornel west's (if you haven't heard of him, do yourself a favor and look him up! He's a brilliant thinker and a lot of fun to read) reading that leaving the conversation on race alone is counterproductive neoliberal thinking and that you need to step back and look at all factors, including class, emplyoment, the penal system, war etc. What you will find is that a lot of these oppressive factors tie back to race, have histories in discrimination, or have magnified consequences for people of color. This does not discount that there are a lot of white people struggling with the same circumstances, but it helps frame and contextualize how these issues play into race.
America is the land where you can fly a flag of slavery and excuse yourself under the false guise of "heritage," but in the national conversation when people want to talk about how this heritage is inherently tied to hate, racists get up in arms.
Sorry this was a huge ramble, key takeaways are
1. Get outside your filter bubble
2. Read prominent black voices in philosohpy
3. Never stop learning
For example, if you want to read further than cornel west, maybe check out some lectures from Bell hooks and learn how these issues of class and race tie into gender and identity. It's a big world out there, take it all in!
