This will likely ruffle some feathers but here goes.
I’m an inquisitive person seeking knowledge and I’ve looked far and wide for what I seek. I have asked others about this and I have been unfriended on Facebook by friends I’ve had for over 30 years for having the gall to ask such a question. No one, not one person, has been able to properly answer my question. Now I’m going to ask the question here (I posted the exact same question on Facebook), publicly, for the entire world to see in an effort to get some kind of definitive answer instead of non fact based “I won’t ever not believe…” gut emotional reactions.
Again; this post is PUBLIC for the entire world to read, take that into consideration when replying. You have been warned.
Here’s the question. Please use critical thinking and facts not your gut emotions to answer the question.
If you are one of the people that claims that systemic anti-black racism exists in the United States please do me a favor and provide evidence other than superficial innuendo and accusations to prove that systemic anti-black racism actually exists. If you are not one of the ones that claim systemic racism exists, please don’t comment I’m truly not looking for speculation or contradictory information.
Here is the kind of evidence/proof/etc that I’m looking for.
1. To prove that systemic racism exists there must first be evidence to show that the racism they claim exists actually exists. Accusations and innuendo are not proof of racism. Facts, nothing but the facts will do.
2. If you can prove that the racism you claim exists in number one then you must provide evidence that the racism has a verifiable pattern showing that it’s systemic. Accusations and innuendo are not proof of systemic racism. Facts, nothing but the facts will do.
Here is your chance to publicly support your opinion. If you don’t want to do it publicly then please send me a personal message. It’s the individual responsibility of the individuals making the claim to support the claim, it’s not the responsibility of others to prove the claim is false.
BE RESPECTFUL OF OTHERS OPINIONS!
If you immediately jump on the ad hominem bandwagon and attack me for asking the question or anyone else for their opinion your reply will be deleted, if you repeat posting ad hominems you will be blocked regardless of who you are. Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Claims that this blog post is gaslighting will be considered ad hominems.
WARNING: I will be saving offline absolutely every post made by anyone regardless of the content of the post. Do not write anything that you wouldn’t want publicly repeated at a later date.
Let the civil and informative discussion begin.
Thanks
Steve
Society's Building Blocks 
I’m going to give you 4 examples.
The first example is one that you can verify on your own, and it is easily verified. It has to do with the housing bubble burst in 2008. One of the many issues uncovered due to the housing collapse was the Sub Prime loan industry. Sub prime loans are for people who’s credit rate is lower than the industry standards for a regular loan. The interest rates were variable and higher than a regular loan. Many lenders once they realized that the potential buyer was not white, wrote the loans as sub prime. When the housing market collapsed, their interest rates started going up and many of them lost their homes as a result.
I was bit by a brown recluse spider in 2011. I went to class and spent the entire time scratching my arm. By the time class was over, I had gone from 2 puncture wounds to a quarter size swollen area. I went to the ER. I told the ER doctor that I had been bit by a spider. He didn’t even touch me, told me to get some neosporene and go home. His parting shot was next time to go to the community hospital since I didn’t have insurance. The only problem is that I had insurance and it was well documented that I had insurance since I had been to that hospital before. He was a white South African and I’m a black woman. Due to his arrogance and ignorance, I ended up in the hospital for 3 days, home health care for 2 months, a picc line so that the antibiotic could go straight to my heart, and last but not least a DVT. Lucky for me, I was able to break it up with aspirin.
The last example is one from my son. This one is for men, especially black men. My son was talking to a young woman who wasn’t feeling well. He offered her a hug. One of her friends pulled him aside and told him to leave. He said no and she slapped him, twice. If he would have hit her back, he’d be in jail. If I would have hit her for hitting him, I’d be in jail. But guess who didn’t spend not one night in jail. Guess who was never arrested and doesn’t have a record. Her friends wanted us to drop everything because she had anger issues. Like I care. She was expelled for the rest of the semester and the following semester, that’s it.
One more example for today. It’s ironic to me that in Wisconsin, some people are protesting about the cops shooting an unarmed black man, but when a white kid kills protesters, he’s hailed as a hero. Black man who is unarmed gets shot, armed white kid who killed people is a hero. There’s something wrong with that.
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Tina,
First and foremost; thank you very much for offering your opinion on this difficult topic, you’re the first person that has been willing to give it a try. I fixed the typos that I found in your comment and separated your 4 examples into separate paragraphs to make it easier for other readers. Now I’ll talk about your examples.
Your first example was about the housing bubble burst in 2008 and sub prime loans from lenders. You wrote “Many lenders once they realized that the potential buyer was not white, wrote the loans as sub prime.” this is not entirely true in fact I’m not so sure that it’s provable that people wrote subprime loans just because people were black. Predatory lenders wrote sub prime loans to many, many thousands of people of all races that had less than ideal credit. I remember mortgage lenders telling me that I qualified for a LOT more than my current home if we went with adjustable rate mortgages but we weren’t greedy keep up with the Jones kind of family and we kept our mortgage as low as we could and used a fixed rate mortgage. The interest rates for these subprime loans didn’t start going up because of the market collapse they started going up because it was in their mortgage contract to do so because almost all of these sub prime mortgages were adjustable rate mortgages and that’s what that kind of mortgage does. Next the housing market collapse was not because of these sub prime mortgages they just accelerated what was happening. The housing market collapse was due to people loosing their jobs and not being able to pay for their mortgages and this affected a LOT more people than those with sub prime mortgages, there were many thousands of people that bought homes with inflated values and adjustable rate mortgages a few years before the housing bubble burst and then when people started loosing their jobs they were under water with their mortgages because they had purchased when the housing market was hot and expensive and when the housing bubble burst the value of homes dropped dramatically in a couple of years and people couldn’t sell their homes for enough to cover their mortgages. My home at that time lost between $50k and $80k in value in that short time period but I had purchased in the early 1980’s when the market was better, I wasn’t underwater on my mortgage and we were still employed. In the end, yes there were predatory lenders but there were many thousands of people that made terrible choices with adjustable rate mortgages and purchased more home than they could reasonably afford. This is not a very good example of systemic racism since this problem existed across all races.
Your second example might be a good example of racism but it’s not an example of systemic racism. By the way, I hope you tried to sue the doctor for malpractice due to racism, based on what you wrote you might have had a decent case.
Your third example; if everyone that ever slapped another person was in jail our jails would be over flowing. Expecting someone to be thrown in jail for slapping someone is ridiculous even in today’s hypersensitive world full of snowflakes. Your example “might” be an example of racism but I really can’t tell because you haven’t presented enough relevant information to make such a determination. Since this slapping incident didn’t escalate, it sounds to me like being expelled for the rest of that semester and the entire next semester was sufficient, in some cases that might have been overkill. This is not an example of systemic racism.
Your fourth example; the black man that was shot by the police officer was NOT unarmed, he had a knife. There are witnesses that heard the police telling him to drop the knife and they found a knife on the floor of the of the vehicle where he was shot. This whole case is still being investigated so try not to fall into the court of public opinion trap of making judgments without all the facts.
As it stands right now, this shooting is not a good example of systemic racism simply because there doesn’t appear to be any racism involved at all, the shooting victim was resisting arrest and appears to have been armed with a knife.
The second part of your fourth example is the teenager shooting three people during the riot. No one is hailing him as a hero, however there are people that have seen the videos (including me) that consider what he did as self defense. It appears that this whole incident started because the teenager put out a dumpster fire with a fire extinguisher and the first gunshot victim didn’t like that his fire had been put out and tried to attack the teenager for putting out the fire and then the teenager fled the attacker and eventually the shooting took place when the teenager was cornered between cars and the attacker caught up to the teenager and attacked him trying to take his firearm (witness has stated this) then the mob spiraled out of control from there. Every shot the teenager shot was in self defense against someone that was in the process of attacking him, in fact the last guy that was shot in the arm was shot when he lunged at the teenager and had a pistol aimed at the teenager’s head when he was shot. Here is are three photos of the handgun guy …
Just before the handgun guy lunges at the teenager…
The handgun guy pointing the hand gun at the teenager and getting shot…
The handgun guy after being shot…
Here is a photo of the skateboard guy attacking the teenager on the ground just before he was shot…
…this is the second time the skateboard guy attacked him using his skateboard like a baseball bat. The first time the skateboard guy hit the teenager from behind in the upper body and head area with the skateboard just before the teenager stumbled and fell in the street.
At this point in time with the evidence that I’ve seen I’ll predict that any murder charges for the teenager will be dropped or he will be found not guilty. He still has a minor in possession of a firearm and leaving the state after the shooting issues that he’ll likely be found guilty.
Again, even though I logically disagreed with your examples I really do appreciate you participating in this discussion. If you can come up with some better examples of systemic racism please present them, I’ll read them and give you my honest opinion.
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I’ve been considering, but haven’t yet, investigated “affordable housing “, realtor “red lining” and other institutional pressures that have created/ maintained inner city “black American neighborhoods “. My thesis is that the Democratic Party leadership has and is oppressing Black America.
I propose that when “Separate but Equal” was ruled unconstitutional the Democratic Party leadership utilized these institutional mechanisms to create segregated school districts. The prevalence of terrible schools servicing predominantly black American children suggests intent rather than coincidence to me. Another factor is the inner city local. Housing planners have long understood that increased population density increases instances of mental illness, making inner city neighborhoods a less healthy places to live. A further issue with these neighborhoods is the elevated unemployment rates. There aren’t enough jobs to go around and yet these programs continue to maneuver black Americans into these neighborhoods.
As a bit of a rabbit trail, I’ll pose this question. Why are so many Hispanic immigrants able to find and maintain employment all while learning English and American culture, but black America maintains a higher than average unemployment rate? Is there something keeping black Americans from moving out of the cities to get work?
I apologize for not researching and providing you with solid data before posting.
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Warren Gibbs,
Thanks for participating.
Warren Gibbs wrote, “My thesis is that the Democratic Party leadership has and is oppressing Black America.”
Here is what I asked for in my blog post…
You didn’t support your thesis at any level instead what you presented was personal opinions and questions with an undertone of consequentialism, that’s how conspiracy theorists argue.
At this point; here’s what I have to say about your thesis, Correlation ≠ Causation. Actually support your thesis and I might change my mind.
Warren Gibbs wrote, “I apologize for not researching and providing you with solid data before posting.”
Here’s a rhetorical question for you; where does your apology fit in this Apology Scale?
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Wow that was strange. I just wrote an really long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say great blog!
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There was not another comment entered by you, you must have messed up.
Try again.
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