No Racism in America?

Too often I hear European Americans (white people) say one of the following: there's no racism in America, it's not that big a deal, we're headed for a race war, or people are too sensitive.

The first two statements are stupid, deniers, people afraid of the change that needs to come. The third makes no sense strategically, tactically, or from a purely human point of view. People hate wars. At least sane people do. There is some truth to the last comment. We can be too sensitive, but it does not come from some distortion of reality. The sensitivity emerges from a steady stream of---let's call it inconsistencies--in the attitude of too many European Americans toward people whose ancestors are from Africa, Latin American, or Asia.

For example, more people of color are getting sick with and dying from COVID-19 than European Americans. Is that racism? No. The economic and societal limitations on people of color causes the difference, and no one is addressing the issue (except for leaders from those communities). That's the definition of systemic racism.

Also, how can a non-racist society foster a subculture that is girding itself for the war of the races. They are called accelerationists. Here's the strangest of their thoughts: the COVID-19 pandemic could ignite that war, which they call the boogaloo--a weird (and probably obtuse) choice to describe a war. I grow up doing the boogaloo or my approximation of the boogaloo. (Type in Doing the Boogaloo and you'll hear the music.) It's a dance, not a war.

That point is lost on too many people. There are some 125 boogaloo groups on Facebook, 60 percent more than last year, and I am referring to those fearing a race war. They have posters, patches, and manifestos. They are not dance groups.

Spelling and consistency are not their hallmarks. Some call themselves the big igloo and others big luau. The latter explains why so many individuals donned Hawaiian shirts at the protest in Lansing against Michigan's continued closure because of the pandemic. It certainly had nothing to do with Lansing's April climate.

Not enough.

Why can't a black guy jog through a white neighborhood? He can, you may say. That was not the case for Ahmaud Arbery, an avid runner. He was running in a white neighborhood of Brunswich, GA. He made one mistake. He ran past Gregory and Travis McMichaels. They assumed he was a suspect in a string of break-ins. Armed with shotgun and pistol, the McMichaels hopped in their pickup and chased the unarmed runner. Eventually they cornered Arbery. There was a struggle. A shot. Arbery died of his wounds.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation needed two months before it brought charges against the McMichaels, and those charges were announced two days after a video of the incident went public, a video the police had access to for two months.

You need more.

Why did the New York Police Department issue more citations and make more arrests of people of color for not following social distancing procedures than whites? The ratio was one white person versus more than 74 people of color.

Still not enough. How about this report from Tom Abate from Stanford Engineering:

"The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when 'a veil of darkness' masks their race.

"As further evidence of bias in traffic stops, Stanford researchers find that while blacks tend to get pulled over more frequently than whites, the disparity lessens at night, when a “veil of darkness” hides their face.

"That is one of several examples of systematic bias that emerged from a five-year study that analyzed 95 million traffic stop records, filed by officers with 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police forces from 2011 to 2018.

"The Stanford-led study also found that when drivers were pulled over, officers searched the cars of blacks and Hispanics more often than whites. The researchers also examined a subset of data from Washington and Colorado, two states that legalized marijuana, and found that while this change resulted in fewer searches overall, and thus fewer searches of blacks and Hispanics, minorities were still more likely than whites to have their cars searched after a pull-over.

“'Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias, and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities,' the researchers write in the May 4th issue of Nature Human Behaviour."