# Living while black in America **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 9, 2018, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611 "2018-07-09T21:17:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 34
**Author:** ![Emiliana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@Emiliana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emiliana)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/663 "2018-08-10T10:56:41Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > A sociologist (like my wife, or mother) would say no one is really in charge of the structures underlying culture, even though they are part of the collective ongoing project to create and maintain them. I have issues with many aspects of social science, but this part is spot on IMO. Nope, nope, nope. All kinds of wrong. Unless the sociology in question comes from the 1950s. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/664 "2018-08-10T14:12:32Z")
> [@Emiliana](#): > > Nope, nope, nope. All kinds of wrong. What **Slacker** wrote ("no one is really in charge … ") makes intuitive sense to me. I’m taking “no one is really in charge” to mean “no _one individual person_ is really in charge” of any given human cultural group. Isn’t that kind of self-evident? Or were coming at the statement from a different angle? ---
**Author:** ![Emiliana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@Emiliana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emiliana)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/665 "2018-08-10T14:35:47Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > What **Slacker** wrote ("no one is really in charge … ") makes intuitive sense to me. I’m taking “no one is really in charge” to mean “no _one individual person_ is really in charge” of any given human cultural group. Isn’t that kind of self-evident? Or were coming at the statement from a different angle? Sure, no single person is in charge of any given culture. But cultures are perpetuated by the powerful. They’re never homogenous and are frequently internally contested. Even in relatively isolated indigenous cultures, for example, women contest their subordination to men. In sociological or anthropological terms, it’s ridiculous to speak of a “black culture” distinct from the broader culture in which African Americans live. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/666 "2018-08-10T17:03:41Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > A sociologist (like my wife, or mother) would say no one is really in charge of the structures underlying culture, even though they are part of the collective ongoing project to create and maintain them. I have issues with many aspects of social science, but this part is spot on IMO. So you reject the argument some people have made that only the individuals who commit specific racist acts are responsible for racism? You’re saying that race relations, including racism, are collectively produced by everyone in the society. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/667 "2018-08-10T17:51:04Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > What **Slacker** wrote ("no one is really in charge … ") makes intuitive sense to me. I’m taking “no one is really in charge” to mean “no _one individual person_ is really in charge” of any given human cultural group. Isn’t that kind of self-evident? Or were coming at the statement from a different angle? No one person is in charge of the whole thing - each individual influences either to perpetuate or discontinue any given aspect of their culture. People are both reacting to, and changing, their own culture. What I do influences everyone else, and what everyone else does influences me. The more interactions we have, the greater the influence. That’s much of the point of the fact that most black children grow up without their fathers. They have no role model for how responsible fathers behave, at least not on the gut level. Same for if you are raised by a single mother, and your older sisters all have children out of wedlock before they reach twenty. You are not doomed, but you are more likely, to feel, whether consciously or unconsciously, that this is how things are done. Being raised by a single parent is disadvantageous. A single parent, of either sex, is going to have less time, and emotional energy to spend socializing their children. And therefore it is that much easier for a child to assume that leaving is what daddies do. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/668 "2018-08-10T18:11:45Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > That’s like asking why rural Afghans cling to a culture that involves women walking around in bags. Some cultures are fucked up and do not contribute to human flourishing, but people don’t necessarily change even when they could and should. Okay, but cultures don’t just develop in a vacuum; they’re influenced by a variety of factors. Moreover, cultures can also change, and sometimes for the better. They can embrace ideas that are useful and discard those that aren’t. But it helps if the more powerful cultures approach these other “fucked up” cultures (your words, not mine) in the spirit of cooperation rather than exploitation. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/669 "2018-08-10T18:17:20Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > No one person is in charge of the whole thing - each individual influences either to perpetuate or discontinue any given aspect of their culture. People are both reacting to, and changing, their own culture. What I do influences everyone else, and what everyone else does influences me. The more interactions we have, the greater the influence. > > That’s much of the point of the fact that most black children grow up without their fathers. They have no role model for how responsible fathers behave, at least not on the gut level. Same for if you are raised by a single mother, and your older sisters all have children out of wedlock before they reach twenty. You are not doomed, but you are more likely, to feel, whether consciously or unconsciously, that this is how things are done. Being raised by a single parent is disadvantageous. A single parent, of either sex, is going to have less time, and emotional energy to spend socializing their children. And therefore it is that much easier for a child to assume that leaving is what daddies do. > > Regards, > Shodan I don’t dismiss everything you’ve written above, though I don’t think single parent households, in and of themselves, are disadvantageous. It depends on the reasons why there’s a single parent household. I knew classmates who were raised by responsible, hardworking single moms; I knew others who were raised by moms (or dads) who were dysfunctional and on meds. But that can happen in 2-parent households, too. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/670 "2018-08-10T19:02:11Z")
There is a literature on single parent families. They suffer disproportionately from a number of adverse outcomes though that doesn’t mean all of them do. They just face greater risks. [Cite, first paragraph](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/are-children-raised-with-absent-fathers-worse-off/). About half of all black families are headed by a single Mom. For whites, the share is 28%: that exceeds the share of black families with single Moms in 1965, when Senator Moynihan wrote his report on the subject, proping the meme of those bad black families. [Single Parents Aren't the Problem](https://www.theroot.com/single-parents-arent-the-problem-1790897125) Anyway by this metric white culture is worse than the black culture of 1965. I agree that single parenthood should be addressed just like any other social trend. As opposed to using it as yet another excuse of why white conservatives don’t need to trouble themselves with the poverty of one race or another. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/671 "2018-08-10T19:09:26Z")
ETA: You know what a reasonable position would be? It might be something like, “We’ll give the impoverished a hand up because they are citizens too. In fact we’ll apply some of best science to the subject, including experimentation with control groups where appropriate. But there are limits. There are limits to the resources we _can_ devote to this and quite frankly there are limits to the resources we want to devote to this. No apologies.” Modern American conservatism is based upon emotivism and white grievance though, so I wouldn’t expect anything like that soon: I see no way of curbing their angry middle aged white male butthurt. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/672 "2018-08-10T19:40:23Z")
A woman called the cops on a black New York state legislator for handing out anti-Trump literature. > **[NY state senator: Woman called 911 on me for handing out anti-Trump flier](https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/401227-ny-state-senator-woman-called-911-on-me-for-handing-out-anti/)** > > New York state Sen. Jesse Hamilton (D) says a woman called the police on him for “dividing people” by distributing campaign materials that included criticisms of President Trump. Hamilton… ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2018, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/673 "2018-08-10T19:44:17Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > ETA: You know what a reasonable position would be? It might be something like, “We’ll give the impoverished a hand up because they are citizens too. In fact we’ll apply some of best science to the subject, including experimentation with control groups where appropriate. But there are limits. There are limits to the resources we _can_ devote to this and quite frankly there are limits to the resources we want to devote to this. No apologies.” > > Modern American conservatism is based upon emotivism and white grievance though, so I wouldn’t expect anything like that soon: I see no way of curbing their angry middle aged white male butthurt. Cosigned. > [@Emiliana](#): > > Nope, nope, nope. All kinds of wrong. Unless the sociology in question comes from the 1950s. What’s wrong with 1950s sociology? Erving Goffman, for my money the greatest sociologist of all time, produced his most famous work in 1956, although my personal favorite stuff from him, on role distance, came out in 1961. > [@bordelond](#): > > What **Slacker** wrote ("no one is really in charge … ") makes intuitive sense to me. I’m taking “no one is really in charge” to mean “no _one individual person_ is really in charge” of any given human cultural group. Right, that’s exactly what I meant. Maybe Emiliana took me as saying there are no hegemons, when there obviously are. OTOH 1950s sociologists knew that too, so I don’t know what she is on about. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > So you reject the argument some people have made that only the individuals who commit specific racist acts are responsible for racism? You’re saying that race relations, including racism, are collectively produced by everyone in the society. I would say it’s some of both. Society and underlying structures are powerful, but they don’t erase all personal responsibility. > [@asahi](#): > > Okay, but cultures don’t just develop in a vacuum; they’re influenced by a variety of factors. Moreover, cultures can also change, and sometimes for the better. They can embrace ideas that are useful and discard those that aren’t. But it helps if the more powerful cultures approach these other “fucked up” cultures (your words, not mine) in the spirit of cooperation rather than exploitation. I agree with all of that. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2018, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/674 "2018-08-11T00:58:16Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > . . . > > I would say it’s some of both. Society and underlying structures are powerful, but they don’t erase all personal responsibility. They don’t erase ANY personal responsibility. If someone commits a crime (or is in some other way disruptive to society) that’s on them. No matter who they are or what kind of oppression they live in. But there are certain conditions that make it more likely that someone might make a bad decision. Poverty and oppression are two such conditions. And racism is a major contributing factoras to why a significant portion of our population is hopelessly mired in poverty and oppression. If society has the power to change that (and I believe we absolutely do) then it has the responsibility to do so. Recognizing that racism in America plays a significant role in the lives of many of our fellow citizens is not the same as saying they are not responsible for their own behavior. But it does put the onus on all of us to try and do something. mc ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/675 "2018-08-11T18:38:28Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > This is a trope that was once very much true but is no longer so. We discussed it in great detail in the Sam Harris thread, so I’m not going to relitigate it here; but the upshot is that the range of debate is from “the average black kid in public schools gets more funding than the average student overall” (my read of the data) to “they get one or two percent less” (a real stretch IMO). A massive infusion of money into certain schools (like Newark) has not increased test scores. > > Conservatives are likely to say this is because bureaucrats wasted the money and teachers are incompetent. I believe the money has created good schools with compassionate, involved teachers, and has resulted in schools parents are by and large happy to send their kids to. But among some people, the racial test score disparity is a priori proof that urban public schools are “shitholes” that are to blame for all social ills befalling African American kids. Fair enough. It’s not my intention to present myself as an expert in all of the problems that plague underprivileged black children; I will leave that to sociologists and psychologists who study the problem, and on the self-reporting of the at-risk kids themselves and their parents. But I’m confident that there are real (and correct) answers that can be given if/when people are willing to ask “what can we do to help prevent the potential of at-risk black children from being wasted?”. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2018, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/676 "2018-08-11T22:18:37Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > This is a trope that was once very much true but is no longer so. We discussed it in great detail in the Sam Harris thread, so I’m not going to relitigate it here; but the upshot is that the range of debate is from “the average black kid in public schools gets more funding than the average student overall” (my read of the data) to “they get one or two percent less” (a real stretch IMO). A massive infusion of money into certain schools (like Newark) has not increased test scores. > > Conservatives are likely to say this is because bureaucrats wasted the money and teachers are incompetent. I believe the money has created good schools with compassionate, involved teachers, and has resulted in schools parents are by and large happy to send their kids to. But among some people, the racial test score disparity is a priori proof that urban public schools are “shitholes” that are to blame for all social ills befalling African American kids. Well, it’s just as much of a hijack in that thread as this one, so… 1. I found it interesting that minority schools only get 1-2% more funding _on average_ as others. Also, I’m guessing that variance of that gap is pretty large. Big picture: yes, throwing money at schools doesn’t get you results. Why is that? My answer: _because education in general is a difficult scientific problem, one that’s been resistant to many years of research_. Paraphrase, from an Economist survey on education worldwide from many years back: “Nobody knows how to make a good school.” You can see (some of) it in performance metrics. The Economist’s take was that a sense of mission was particularly helpful; true or not, it’s nonetheless hard for me to believe there’s a strong basis for that claim in data. Too difficult to measure properly. I understand you are focusing on black majority schools in Chicago. But honestly, the challenge of creating good schools extends to everywhere in the world. Including well-healed private schools. Everywhere. Charter schools aren’t a panacea either, though I understand that _under certain circumstances_ they can constructively prompt educational reform, largely by shaking up entrenched institutions and personalities. I’ve heard one expert say that restructuring a school isn’t wholly dissimilar to restructuring a business: for one thing there isn’t a fixed blueprint for either. But I didn’t see airtight evidence for that argument either. Here’s a quote; I hope my readers can pick up on the analogy. > [@Paul Krugman](#): > > An Indian born economist once explained his personal theory of reincarnation to his graduate economics class: “If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist he said, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.” > > A sociologist might say that this quote shows what is wrong with economists: they want a subject that is fundamentally about human beings to have the mathematical certainty of the hard sciences… But good economists know that the speaker was talking about something else entirely: the sheer difficulty of the subject. Economics is _hard_: it’s _harder_ than physics; luckily it is not quite as hard as sociology. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2018, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/677 "2018-08-11T22:52:21Z")
> [@mikecurtis](#): > > But there are certain conditions that make it more likely that someone might make a bad decision. Moreover, there are certain conditions that might convince some individuals that playing by the rules yields little reward, and that the systems and its rules are a sham. A majority ethnic group in a racist society have more faith in police, more faith in the civil courts, more faith in criminal courts, more faith in justice, more faith in schools, more faith in people in positions of power to respect them as upstanding, law-abiding, productive members of society. That’s a little harder for the descendants of people whose great great grandparents were bought, whipped, and sold as slaves, whose great grandparents were lynched, whose grandparents had fire hoses turned on them for trying to sit at the front of the bus, and who today are clearly getting different treatment by people in positions of authority and power than their white counterparts. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/678 "2018-08-12T01:37:40Z")
Measure, I love that Krugman quote. I love my sociologist wife and sociologist mom. I know I come across as harsh toward that field of study, but it’s only because I get frustrated that they are so reflexively resistant to biological “essentialist” fields like evolutionary psychology, when I would ideally wish that each side would recognize that they both have something to offer to fill in the puzzle of reality. > [@asahi](#): > > Moreover, there are certain conditions that might convince some individuals that playing by the rules yields little reward, and that the systems and its rules are a sham. A majority ethnic group in a racist society have more faith in police, more faith in the civil courts, more faith in criminal courts, more faith in justice, more faith in schools, more faith in people in positions of power to respect Thithem as upstanding, law-abiding, productive members of society. That’s a little harder for the descendants of people whose great great grandparents were bought, whipped, and sold as slaves, whose great grandparents were lynched, whose grandparents had fire hoses turned on them for trying to sit at the front of the bus, and who today are clearly getting different treatment by people in positions of authority and power than their white counterparts. This is a very good argument. In a vacuum, logically, it makes perfect sense. But how does it explain the points Coleman Hughes made, that Japanese Americans, and Asian Americans more broadly, faced severe governmental and societal discrimination, yet persevered to outpace even white Americans educationally and economically? What about the American citizens of Caribbean descent, who are black, outwardly indistinguishable from other African Americans, and whose ancestors were enslaved just as long as the descendants of American slaves, but who seem to do much better? (I don’t know quite how to explain it myself, so it’s an honest question and not a rhetorical one.) ETA: I want to reiterate that I strongly support reparations for slavery and for Jim Crow. Coleman Hughes seems to oppose it because he feels that most black people will just piss the money away. But that is an area where I disagree with him. Even if they do (and surely not all of them will), they deserve it. If my parents get horribly screwed over by the government all their lives, their labor stolen and used to enrich others, and they sue for damages but die before the case can be adjudicated, I as their heir should be able to receive anything they would have been awarded. Same goes here. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2018, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/679 "2018-08-12T02:26:38Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > This is a very good argument. In a vacuum, logically, it makes perfect sense. But how does it explain the points Coleman Hughes made, that Japanese Americans, and Asian Americans more broadly, faced severe governmental and societal discrimination, yet persevered to outpace even white Americans educationally and economically? The discrimination was entirely different both in character and vehemence. Asians did not face over a century of mass brutality, rape, and torture, along with deeply ingrained cultural attitudes of dehumanization and supposed savagery, and much more. > [@](#): > > What about the American citizens of Caribbean descent, who are black, outwardly indistinguishable from other African Americans, and whose ancestors were enslaved just as long as the descendants of American slaves, but who seem to do much better? (I don’t know quite how to explain it myself, so it’s an honest question and not a rhetorical one.) I’ll look for a cite when I’m able, but in my understanding 1st and 2nd generations immigrants of all types, including Carribeans, generally show high statistical aptitudes, while later generations generally revert to the mean. So it’s not anything about where black Americans descend from, but for how many generations they’ve been here. Which seems like a very clear indicator that there’s something about how black people are treated in American society that’s having an enormous affect on these outcomes. This also explains a lot of Asian statistical success – they have generally been in America for many fewer generations than black Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2018, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/680 "2018-08-12T02:44:08Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Measure, I love that Krugman quote. I love my sociologist wife and sociologist mom. I know I come across as harsh toward that field of study, but it’s only because I get frustrated that they are so reflexively resistant to biological “essentialist” fields like evolutionary psychology, when I would ideally wish that each side would recognize that they both have something to offer to fill in the puzzle of reality. I perceive that evolutionary psychology’s stock has been on the upswing for maybe 30 years or so, from a rather skeptical base. Justifiably so, given the errors of social Darwinism. I don’t have a good grasp of sociology quite frankly, though I perceive practitioners vary a lot in terms of methodology. Quite a few are data oriented, though given the topic that’s not the only legit approach in my view. Education professors can be highly quantitative as well; but as noted earlier, the underlying problem is just hard. Evolutionary psychology: here I’ll plug the author Robert Wright. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2018, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/681 "2018-08-12T02:52:39Z")
Oh, yeah, Living while black in America: This isn’t a game changer at all, but Vox reports the following: [INDENT] Mitt Romney is calling on Americans to “categorically and consistently reject racism and discrimination” on the anniversary of racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 and on the eve of a repeat of the Unite the Right rally this year in Washington, DC. The former Massachusetts governor and current US Senate candidate in Utah issued a lengthy statement on Friday defending equality, steeped in his religious upbringing and belief that “we are all children of God.” [/INDENT] Boilerplate stuff, or at least it was three years ago. > **[Mitt Romney’s statement on the Charlottesville anniversary strikes a chord...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/11/17679212/mitt-romney-unite-the-right-charlottesville-trump)** > > "It must be electorally disqualifying to equivocate on racism." This part is more interesting, coming from Mitt: [INDENT]My understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, is that it is not intended to elevate minority lives above white lives; it is intended to draw vivid attention to the too frequent reality of deadly racial discrimination in law enforcement and in the courts. [/INDENT] At one time this was the consensus among the American elite: [INDENT]The matter of race and racism is not tangential to the great issues of our day: it is one of them. It is impossible for America to achieve and sustain high growth, economic superiority, and global leadership if our citizenry is divided, disengaged, and angry. But more than this, we must foster equality if we are to remain a great and good nation. And we ourselves must embrace the dignity of all God’s children if we are to merit His love. [/INDENT] ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2018, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611/682 "2018-08-12T02:59:09Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Boilerplate stuff, or at least it was three years ago. The Bush administration tried to bring torture back into the mainstream. The Trump administration is trying to bring racism back into the mainstream. I’m worried that the next Republican President we elect will try to normalize cannibalism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611.md?page=33) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-while-black-in-america/817611.md?page=35)