Maggie's Farm

"Why do racial disparities persist in household income, job status, and incarceration rates, when explicit racism has, by all measures, greatly diminished over the last half-century?"
Not to mention homicide rates and homicide victimization rates.Black Americans Are Killed At 12 Times The Rate Of People In Other Developed Countries.The homicide rate in the US is not exceptional compared to the rest of the world, but the US homicide rate is high compared to highly developed countries. When white and black homicide rates in the US are compared, we see that it is the black homicide rate that makes the US an outlier among highly developed countries.
White gun ownership is greater than black gun ownership, so it cannot be argued that it is access to guns that makes the difference.

The homicide rate in the US is about half of what it was 25 years ago.

I worked in Trinidad. From that experience I concluded that there was some discomfort inherent in being in a racial minority. I felt quite comfortable with fellow employees, regardless of race. The discomfort, which went up and down, had to do with experiences on the street. On my flight out of Trinidad, I set next to a black Trini, who was an MBA student at USC. "The shoe is on the other foot," was the way he put it.

From my experience in Trinidad, I concluded that blacks in this country will always live with a certain level of discomfort, as I lived in Trinidad with a certain level of discomfort.

Yes, the race-baiters try to amp up the discomfort. There is a black state legislator in Missouri who has gotten some negative feedback for comparing Trump to Hitler. Her response is that as a black she shouldn't have gotten any negative feedback. Doncha' know, comparing someone who has a Jewish son-in-law to Hitler is telling like it is. Yeah, right.

My experience in Trinidad was that my discomfort was not entirely self-imposed. Example: an old lady in a bakery called me a "white motherfucking cunt" for wearing shorts in tropical Trinidad- a place where a lot of the local males also wore shorts.

OTOH, I got very tired of classifying people by race, and after a while decided "the hell with it" and stopped doing so- or less so.

The WMFC experience was the exception, but it left me with the impression that she was far from the only one who thought so. Others in the bakery told me she was a drunk. So alcohol loosened her tongue, expressing an opinion which most inhibit themselves from speaking.

But many street experiences were cordial. Impressed by the steel drum corps during Carnival, I asked a (black) woman about learning to play a steel drum and marching in a steel drum band (Pan is what Trinis call steel drums.) during Carnival. The reply came that Trinidadians were conservative- read not very open to strangers (many told me that people were a lot more friendly after they had seen you there for 6 months or so)- but that if you could show you were sincere and willing to work, that yes, it would be a good possibility to play in a steel drum band.

No simple answers. As my boss told me when I got to Trinidad, there is a lot of bitching about race, but people work together and things get done.