Originally Posted by Pete F.
(Post 1217007)
Of course bias doesn't exist, we are all color blind and society should take no responsibility at all.
The Dems made a mistake when CRT was adopted as an issue by Trumplicans, of not saying Society does not bear ALL responsibility for the current status of black americans but we do need to help our fellow americans help themselves and to do that we need to look at history honestly, not hiding the bad parts.
One of the often cited black economists, Glen Loury wrote:
What we call “race” is mainly a social, and only indirectly a biological, phenomenon. The persistence across generations of racial differentiation between large groups of people, in an open society where individuals live in proximity to one another, provides irrefutable indirect evidence of a profound separation between the racially defined networks of social affiliation within that society. There would be no races in the steady state of any dynamic social system unless, on a daily basis and with regard to their most intimate affairs, people paid assiduous attention to the boundaries separating themselves from racially distinct others. Over time, race would cease to exist unless people chose to act in a manner so as biologically to reproduce the variety of phenotypic expression that constitutes the substance of racial distinction.
How should we think about the persistence of racial inequality in America? To deny the relevance of behavioral patterns among some black families and communities is folly. To wash one’s hands of their problems because of such cultural and behavioral impediments is profoundly unjust. There are no easy answers, but I suggest that the view here is worth considering as a way to account for, and then respond to, an enduring dilemma that confronts and frustrates us still.
Take the poor central-city dwellers who make up perhaps a quarter of the African-American population. The dysfunctional behavior of many in this population does account for much of their failure to progress—and conservatives’ demand for greater personal responsibility is necessary and proper. Yet, confronted with the despair, violence, and self-destructive behavior of so many people, it seems morally superficial in the extreme to argue, as many conservatives do, that “those people should just get their acts together; if they did, like many of the poor immigrants, we would not have such a horrific problem in our cities.” To the contrary, any morally astute response to the social pathology of American history’s losers would have to conclude that, while we cannot change our ignoble past, we must not be indifferent to contemporary suffering issuing directly from that past. Their culture may be implicated in their difficulties, but so is our culture complicit in their troubles; we bear collective responsibility for the form and texture of our social relations.
While we cannot ignore the behavioral problems of the so-called black underclass, we should discuss and react to those problems as if we were talking about our own children, neighbors, and friends. It will require adjusting ways of thinking on both sides of the racial divide. Achieving a well-ordered society, where all members are embraced as being among us, should be the goal. Our failure to do so is an American tragedy. It is a national, not merely a communal, disgrace. Changing the definition of the American “we” is a first step toward rectifying the relational discrimination that afflicts our society, and it is the best path forward in reducing racial inequality.
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