Quote:
Originally posted by Vrx.
Who do you think sold their own people to the whites BB
More importantly, assimilation is a choice
|
The slave issue is partly it, but it's not the entire story. Asian Americans have been allowed to prosper in the background in relative peace, so I'd say that's their biggest advantage over other US minorities.
The other large chunk of the issue for blacks is the socially structured condition of black criminality.
There’s a long history in this country of dealing with problems in the African American community through the criminal justice system, criminalizing social problems (like unemployment, mental health, illiteracy, etc.) in a way that we don’t do in other communities.
The enduring view of blacks in this country is as a race of people who are prone to criminality.
Take it like this:
To pursue your own freedom [as a slave] was illegal, slavery was enforced by the criminal justice system that made very ordinary things like learning to read effectively a criminal act.
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave, he was a criminal. Harriet Tubman was running a massive criminal conspiracy, stealing people into freedom. I know we all love Martin Luther King today, but in his time, by the highest powers in the American justice system, the FBI, Martin Luther King was viewed as a criminal. That's why they signed off on the bugging of his home and wherever he was.
The lens of criminal justice is the way this country has traditionally regarded black people and that has painted how anything we do is received. The blackness of our skin carries with it a lot of socially constructed implications of who we are as a people.