When Did Systemic Racism End?

Geoist said:

I think even conservatives will agree that systemic racism was indeed a very real problem in the past. What else could one call the slave economy and Jim Crow laws of the South, the red-lining of cities, etc? But most conservatives say systemic racism is no longer an issue. So when exactly did it end?

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jnug said:

I can see that its time for a European Imperialism and American Racism primer:
- Europe turned to conquest because Europe has no resources. It is and was as resource poor as it gets. Russia is the best current example of what a country that is resource poor does to get by. It robs, cheats, steals and bluffs all it can and sells what it can wherever it can.
- Initially the countries of Europe tried conquering each other. Why travel half way round the globe when you can just conquer your neighbor. But they eventually discovered that they all had the same problem. They were all resource poor. So conquering each other did not bear many rrewards
- Next they developed ships capable of sailing far from their coastline, naval guns and gunnery
- Next they began their conquest of Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean
- European Christians of all sorts but mainly Spain, France, England and Dutch were heavily involved in this hemisphere....add Belgium for Africa
- American Christians learned about conquest and imperialism from European Christians
- European Christians demonized other races to justify conquest
- American Christians developed race science to an advanced art
- European Christians (mainly the Germans) learned their race science from.....AMERICAN CHRISTIANS and you have a closed loop

The real tragedy of American Conquest, Imperialism and Racism is that this hemisphere was resource rich to such a degree that it exceeded Europe's wildest imagination. In other words, the White Christians of America did not need conquest and imperialism. They did not need to destroy Native Americans through genocide and take their land and really did not need to bind themselves to chattel slavery to work it. There was enough here for a thousand Europes and there was well enough here for all the colonists and all the Native Americans and all of their ancestors and then some. It is our good fortune that the great monarchs of Europe were too f----ing stupid and too f----ing greedy and too narrow minded to see that they were giving up on the greatest bonanza they could have ever imagined. Maybe too much inbreeding addled their brains. The Spanish just wanted gold and could give a crap about anything else. The French got their noses bloodied in the Caribbean and were so upset that they sold off their holdings in North America for a song and a dance. The British were eternally broke and simply could not deal with those pesky Americans before or after the Revolution. They just would not come to heel, DAMN THEM.

Americans are systemic racism incarnate. You can convince yourselves otherwise all you want. That is why we struggle so with the aspirational intentions expressed in our Founding documents. We are on one hand trying to live up to those aspirations and on the other trying to deny them.

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Mithrae said:

I feel like the Nuremburg trials reached a slightly different conclusion. America's foundational document - its very reason for existence and justification for treason against the crown - declares that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (later formalized in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and, crucially, citing consent of the governed as the basis for all laws' legitimacy. Laws radically contrary to those fundamental rights, made by a handful of despots, have and had zero legitimacy. It's surprising that you'd claim otherwise.

Nor is that some kind of novel concept of a gradually-evolving society. Looking at what some (particularly in early American history) would say is an even higher authority, a spokesperson for that Creator himself, it's said to do to others as you'd have them do to you, for this fulfills the law and prophets. Condemnation of and expecting restitution for the brutality of American chattel slavery is not imposing recent values or laws on a less developed society, it's holding them to their own foundational legislative principles and even more ancient and universal moral ones.

You understand that this is an idiosyncratic if not almost unique notion of racism, of course? Many proponents of Jim Crow laws under the slogan of 'separate but equal' would have insisted that their system was not racist. You do agree that it was a racist system, I assume? Obviously the same must be true of one which is not equal, one which (with advocates' full knowledge regardless of professed intent) disproportionately harms a historically poorer segment of society never compensated for the brutalities and disadvantages inflicted on them.

It's a big topic, and <5000 characters is hardly an onerous read.

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