People of black color. Believe it or not; EVERYBODY is a person of color. Yeah I said it; white is just as much of a color as black, brown, or anything else. So let’s quit pretending that it is not.
The problem is the white privileged status, white as a color is irrelevant when they get the lion's share of everything versus the minorities they still want to act as if they are getting "too much"
Equity in representation? What does that mean? Are you talking about political representation? Because Black people are if anything over represented in that area. According to the National Black Caucus, they represent 25% of the US population even though black people (population wise) only represent half of that amount. No other race in the history of this country has had that level of over representation; not even white people.
I was referring to a broader notion, political representation can improve, but the problem is still with those numbers, you're ignoring that white people are still the decided majority. By all means, skew the numbers to suggest black people are more represented because of having 25% of total versus their population total, but I feel like per capita, we're still talking white people would probably have 50% or more representation politically and that's reflected in no small part with the 4 major parties of note, where I think at best, we have 2 people of color (in terms of minority races, being pedantic isn't helping, because it glosses over how white is seen as the "default") among all the candidates and they're both vice presidential candidates, everyone else white.
There are more white people than anyone else in this country, and it’s not like all white people are the focus of “virtually anything” it is the rich, the athletes, actors, politicians, and others who maintain the spotlight, it’s not like poor and middle income white people (the vast majority of em) get this kind of focus.
And that's the problem: they are the people we're expected to aspire to be, but they're majority white. How is that okay in terms of a system that still is biased towards white people even if some people of color manage some notoriety? They're still forgettable by comparison
People who live in high crime neighborhoods get this type of treatment over people living in low crime neighborhoods. That’s more of a neighborhood thing, not all black people live in high crime neighborhoods.
Due to racist policies, Black people were restricted from being a part of much of this Nations history in the past; but yeah things have gotten better now. But this does not marginalize ME in any way today. I am a product of my past; not a prisoner of it.
The problem is low crime neighborhoods would, I'm almost sure, be majority white, so of course they're going to be less prone to the issue of police brutality which has disproportionate effects on black people. I don't recall the statistics exactly, but it works ironically in a similar fashion to your example of the Black Caucus, a small portion of the population with a high percentage of arrests and even deaths by police
"Better" is relative to perspective and your success is almost set up by white people to still have limits. It may not be as obvious, but there's not only the personal and institutional racism as a distinction, but explicit and implicit as well, the latter more biases that are almost unconscious, socially conditioned by the ideas we have about black people.
And I never claimed you were in the same situation as black people from 50 years ago, but it doesn't mean you're still not being held back by a society that treats you like an afterthought, even if it isn't malicious in nature, per Hanlon's razor: it can just be ignorance and privilege
I have never understood people who call cleaning up, improving, decreasing the crime rate while simultaneously increasing the value of a neighborhood (gentrifying) a bad thing? One thing you need to realize; not all black people are renters, many of us own our own houses and of those who own their own houses, a disproportionate number of us own houses in older urban neighborhoods. When that neighborhood becomes gentrified, those black people invested in that neighborhood make a killing! Why is this a bad thing? Yeah rent goes up but that’s because they choose to raise rent; nobody is forcing them to do this! Make no mistake; gentrification has put more money in the hands of black people than any government program; I call that a good thing.
I never claimed all black people were renters
The free market forces them to do this, I'm pretty sure that's one of the fundamental problems in gentrificaiton, it disproportionately creates problems for those people who aren't as affluent and are able to live in that neighborhood because it isn't suffering from that kind of inflation and other issues that can affect the economy in ways that seem primarily based on demographics and some fear of the neighborhood being bad because of black people moving in or other minorities.
Can't speak to the representation in my neck of the woods, or even my neighborhood, but I'd bet you dollars to donuts I can barely find 10 houses out of 200 with people of color in them, and I could even be generous and include mixed race children that were adopted (one of my cousins adopted non white kids, iirc, she has a big heart like that, though she also married early in life and I believe divorced so...major daddy issues that aren't really germane, just a thought)
And renting is not necessarily just something people can get past, because job advancement or availability, plus pay scaling is not always going to work for everyone. That's especially the case in areas where you have this kind of economic destabilization or such and interest rates or rent go up arbitrarily or based on some factors, so that of course the affluent don't suffer, they just step over the impoverished or exploit them by the idea that they should be "grateful" they have anything. Some of the problems are class based, the haves over the have-nots, but intersectionally, these issues disproportionately affect black people as I understand it, because they're stuck in those situations even IF they work to get out of it, in no small part because America's economy is so biased to people who already have versus those who lack.
Actually that is covered by the media; how much more coverage do you want? And lets face it; the coronavirus is a behavioral thing; its not like we've got racist germs out there looking for black people to infect!
Health care is a financial thing; not a marginalized thing. And how do the symptoms of the coronavirus effect black people differently than whites? This is news to me.
Any viral infection has a behavioral factor, but I'm talking about the symptoms themselves and how black people don't manifest them the same way
Marginalization occurs financially too, you're seemingly taking such a simplistic view you'd dismiss anything because you want to have this feeling you're already equal to white people when, no, the problem is a society that still treats you like you just need to work harder to be on white people's level
I may have misspoke on the symptoms, though those will vary by people regardless of skin color anyway because of the novel nature of this. But with black people, from one study, supposedly dying from this disease TWICE as much as white people, it shows that there are issues institutionally that are putting black people at more risk to not only contract it, but also not get the same kind of care or access that white people would have.
I’m not familiar with everything you might be a fan of, but I can list a lot of areas where black people are given more visibility and white people less visibility in areas I might be a fan of; it’s all a matter of where you choose to look
I try to balance between Western and Eastern stuff, the latter especially bad about it, but that's more due to how little Asian cultures have really striven to understand or have interactions with many black people.
The West has no excuse, black people have been important and a demographic that isn't just minor in Western countries, even America. The examples you can give are potentially just a reflection of how society is unconsciously skewing and directing black people to those areas, athletics just one example, since I've read a study suggesting part of the black community's struggle in dealing with this pandemic is because they're more commonly in service industries where they're at risk of contracting it.
Black people don't need it either! An argument can be made that there were more black business in the past, and more black people fighting for financial success when racism was much more prevalent and before these programs were in place than there are now. It's like the more you guys try to save us, the worse things seem to get! Black people don’t need white people to save us, just get out of our way and allow us to save ourselves!
I didn't claim every effort was perfect and that's in part because of systemic racism being a different factor that people's ignorance from misinformation back in the 20th century about blacks somehow being biologically inferior or even intellectually inferior, which have long been debunked and rejected. Now the issue is how institutions still have societal biases that aren't based on bad information, but bad stereotypes and the like.
When the problems are stacked against black people on multiple levels, some of which white people struggle with as well, like the shrinking middle class in particular, asking for assistance is not a sign of weakness or complacency, you're trying to overcompensate with this idea that somehow you don't need anyone's help and then paint white people as if we're being malicious instead of ignorant: again, Hanlon's razor is so applicable in these tense times, I've found
Not all white people think that way, and the fact that these structures are in place is still an example of privileges black people have that white people do not.
The structures are something that were given as a concession, arguably, white people not wanting to seem too racist, but also able to "keep black people under control" effectively, because they only have those groups that really can help them, while the other groups don't care.
I have no doubt there are many areas where there are disadvantages for being black, but there are other areas where there are advantages. To pretend as if there are only disadvantages of being black, and only advantage of being white requires you to only look at half the picture.
The advantages are not advantages in the sense that there is a societal bias that is positive, because it could still very much be that kind of treatment based on your race, which is the fundamental crux of the problem: you shouldn't be treated differently based on your race unless it is relevant, which is not something that should be as prevalent in various contexts as it still is
Actually it pretty much IS a dog whistle for black supremacy. Pride is something you have within; you don’t need to go telling everybody about it. Nearly every area I see black pride advertised, is usually an area that attracts black supremacist regardless of how innocent the original intention was. This shouldn’t be surprising to you, just like anywhere you see white pride advertised, that usually attracts white supremacists, why would you assume black people would be exempt from this type of behavior?
Again, you're oversimplifying: pride as internal is not excluded from asserting yourself against those who will dismiss you. You think gay people were just trying to be jerks with gay pride? No, they were being stepped over by the majority culture that treated them as if they weren't important.
The incidental attraction is not the same as it being intended that way: it's the same problem you're forgetting: polysemous words and extremists ignoring that. Pride has multiple meanings and you're focusing on the one meaning arrogance and such rather than self respect against a culture that pushes you down
White pride is explicitly a dog whistle because white pride is not a thing in the sense of pride as it applies to minorities, we never struggled in that way, we were given the benefit of the doubt as white people.
As the majority culture, white pride in some white culture is nonexistent; there are ethnicities that have cultural identities, but the whiteness is distinct because as a racial group, we rarely had the struggles blacks have had under white colonial influences (to say nothing of Hispanics, Native people, etc)
