You say there cannot be any discourse between us because I apparently don’t understand the meaning of systemic and institutional racism. Perhaps the ACTUAL reason there cannot be any discourse between us is that your approach to “discourse” is apparently to tell those who express reasoned disagreement with you to “shut up” and go away.
My comment didn’t insult you, call you any names or tell you to shut up. What I did is make an argument, taking your notion of “vicious abstractions” and pointing out that those very terms you and many among the current breed of identity politickers are so fond of — “systemic” and “institutional” racism — are themselves, ironically enough, the very kinds of “vicious abstractions” you decry insofar as these terms conceal this unpleasant and otherwise inexplicable reality: despite decades of rollback in ACTUAL racism against American blacks and the establishment of an embarrassing system of state-sanctioned institutional PREFERENCES for blacks on every level of society, both public and private, American blacks have continued to fall further behind even though nearly every other ethnic and racial group, including those with skin just as dark or darker than that of most American blacks (eg, Indian Americans and black American immigrants from Africa), has advanced significantly over the same time period (Indian Americans actually being the #1 wealthiest group in America, in terms of average income). As such, blaming the failure of African Americans on “whiteness,” “white supremacy,” “institutional racism” or the like is a strategy that has no real answer to give to the simple question of why it is that these same pernicious forces of “whiteness,” “white supremacy” and “institutional racism” that are supposedly such big obstacles for Americans blacks were so spectacularly UNsuccessful at holding back the remarkable economic achievements of newly arriving immigrants from South and East Asia, Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, Cuba or Iran, to use a few examples.
Contrary to your suggestion, I am well-aware of the meaning of institutional racism and systemic racism. I simply happen to see reality a bit differently from you, in that I believe these forces are markedly outweighed by countervailing anti-discriminatory polities and politics. If you want to discuss that issue with me in a respectful fashion, you’re welcome to do so. If you want to call me names and tell me to shut up, however, you might never understand that the reason my “ill-conceived comment g[o]t 250 more claps than [your] article itself” might just be because others didn’t think my comment was quite as ill-conceived as you did. I don’t put much stock in counting heads, and am in no way going to tell you or imply, “oh, a bunch of people apparently agree with me, so I’m right,” and yet I don’t think it would be such a bad idea for you to take these peoples’ views as a hint that you might want to treat my points seriously rather than giving them an intemperate brush-off that only serves to expose the fragility of your underlying argument.
