I feel like it started getting worse from 2016 on and since 2020 the world has become so weird
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 2 days ago
People make way too much of a fuss about race now. Back in the 90s the focus was to be colorblind, ie to treat everyone the same. Now people are focusing on race again in a big way. It boggles my mind that people now think treating people differently based on race is somehow a good thing.
Social_Discussion@lemm.ee 2 days ago
loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I recommend you check out “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander.
The basic getaway from the book is this: Segregationists didn’t go anywhere, and since the time of Ronald Reagan, the ways the segregationists found to keep black people down are mostly related to the economy and law enforcement. The stereotype being attacked is now the “gang-bangers”, those from “the hood”. Not all black people… Just most of them.
From the 60s-70s, black people living in near industrial zones where they mostly worked were hit by mass unemployment due to their relocation. Rather than try to find a solution, propaganda stigmatising them was massively produced, the “war on drugs” was started to punish them for the only survival means that some found. Black people serve disproportionately long sentences, and are forever alienated when they get out, often unable to find jobs. Not only those who were imprisoned, but their families and communities suffer from this. This is not only true of drug-related crime; but sometimes things like misfiled taxes. The war on drugs was basically a pretext to over police and arbitrarily arrest black people, and dissuade them from forms of protest against their situation.
Now, compared to segregation, this is as big a net, but not such a tight one: This systems allows some black people to escape this system and get a situation equal to white people… But of you look at the bulk of the stats, many aren’t better off than during segregation.
These were at first, right-wing policies bore by the Republican Party, but Bill Clinton ended up doubling down on them instead of opposing them, because he didn’t want to appear “weak on crime”, since then there has been no opposition to it in mainstream politics.
Colorblindness helps this system, because it keeps you from naming the oppressed group, and thus from seing the oppression. It makes it easier to swallow the idea that the millions in prison are no-good gand hooligans from the mysterious land of “hood”, but that for the most part, black people are doing fine, because those who went to the same school as you or are among your coworkers are doing fine.
ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 2 days ago
Pretending to be colorblind hurts non-white people more than not.