___________________________________________________________________________________________ I recognize that the costs/benefits analysis of this discussion does not support my efforts in answering you, but I'm going to try. I further recognize that there's likely to be a swamp of death-by-1000-cuts line-by-line parsing so that larger issues can be ignored in favor of minutiae, but I accept that. In amongst several thousand words of cross-purpose antagonism, there's this shining, rhetorical lodestone that sweeps away all the chaff, all the bluster, all the willfully ignorant sophistry so I'm gonna fish it out, run it under the tap and put it under the light because by damn, you might just understand. HERE IT IS: The less horrible the majority acts, the fewer heroes the minority has to sacrifice. You seem quite positive and honorific about the sacrifices oppressed groups have made to lessen their oppression. However, you lack sympathy for the idea that sacrifices should not be required. To you, it's an abstraction: the onus is on the oppressed to rise up and demand their fair share. To 8bit, he's 21 times more likely to get shot by a cop than you. This accounts for the unsympathetic reception you've received: The white person's role is to accept the mild inconvenience of vigilance towards racism. The black person's role is, according to you, martyrdom. The issue is compounded by the ready evidence of martyrdom amongst the black community and the scarce evidence of its effectiveness. Rodney King was 23 years ago. Detroit was 25 years before that (and then 25 years before that). The Emancipation Proclamation was 150 years ago - your arbitrary cut-off of when we started treating blacks as "human". Yet it's still substantially harder to thrive as a minority in the United States than as the majority. Minorities definitely serve to benefit the most from equal treatment. From a "rational markets" perspective, the onus of transformation is on them. But rational markets are pure evil from an ethical standpoint: if I'm seven times less likely to go to jail and 21 times less likely to get shot over it, isn't the onus on me to do something about it? Particularly when all I have to do is not be a douche and accept that sometimes I should go out of my way to be sensitive to people different than me? "No process is instant, and no good thing takes no work to achieve." Yes. Absolutely. But holy fuck. There are people in trenches and people in lawn chairs and sometimes it's good for the soul to recognize which one you are and pick up a spade. Or at least grab an extra beer from the fridge if you're going there anyway.Every person that's stepped up to make change got shot, lol. I've done my part.
And we are all better off for it. It's why we call them heroes.
Hah, still remember how to quote on this site. Been a while. This statement is an obvious one, it is like saying "if the sky was red, fewer people would need large planes with which to paint the sky" It doesn't change that sacrifice is required to inspire change. People have to stand up for what they believe in if they want to inspire progress. I am not saying this must be black people, but I would guess that the vast majority of people who care enough about the issues facing black communities are black themselves. In an ideal world, nobody would ever have to work a day, make any sacrifices, or ever do anything. That isn't this world. In 150 years we have gone from treating a group of people as less than human to having large and society wide discussions on how we are not properly giving them access to resources, and that they are being targeted more often by police. I understand that it still isn't truly "right". I understand that there is still more to go, and I understand the frustration around the lack of progress in change in recent years. However, change is something that is slow, especially when regarding culture. These events have and will continue to chip away and cause progress towards a more equal and better society. Yes, because if you don't, nobody else is going to. This isn't a matter of what's fair, it's a matter of what works. All this talk about how white people should be doing more, and this is what you say is all people have to do? This is nothing. This is the bare minimum I would expect from anyone out there. What I talk about when I mean "going out to change the world" I mean heading out and protesting, hitting the streets, yelling, making noise, making yourself heard and in the public eye. Real activism. You doing this isn't going to stop police, it's not going to stop the KKK, it's not going to stop cultures in Charleston from stirring up a massive identity around fear and hatred. It's lazy, and that's what I mean. The vast majority of people are lazy, and aren't going to stand up or try to cause change. Doing that is left to those motivated to do so.The less horrible the majority acts, the fewer heroes the minority has to sacrifice.
However, you lack sympathy for the idea that sacrifices should not be required.
The Emancipation Proclamation was 150 years ago - your arbitrary cut-off of when we started treating blacks as "human". Yet it's still substantially harder to thrive as a minority in the United States than as the majority.
if I'm seven times less likely to go to jail and 21 times less likely to get shot over it, isn't the onus on me to do something about it?
Particularly when all I have to do is not be a douche and accept that sometimes I should go out of my way to be sensitive to people different than me?