A response to this meme, found in “politics”:
Your meme is quite factual and cogently-argued, and touches upon a truth that is obscured by our era’s hyperpartisanship and the 24-hour news cycle.
Systemic racism transcends partisan politics. It’s woven into the fabric of our country.
It’s the background radiation left over from the Big Bang of our nation’s Founding. At which time all men were aspirationally proclaimed “equal,” but those with dark skin were notably excluded from that promise.
Ending slavery in 1865 was a huge step in living up to that promise, but it was sadly followed up by 100 years of Jim Crow.
Indeed, the Jim Crow system was so terrible for blacks that Adolf Hitler cited it with approval in the 1920s and 1930s as a model for a successful apartheid racist state. The Nazis carried it to an even greater extreme, but frightening to think we inspired the Nazis in this.
Passing the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was another big step forward, and while the Act made blacks equal under the law, it did not magically make blacks equal in practice.
Specifically: Many black families who had been previously excluded from owning property or amassing wealth during the hundreds of years of slavery and Jim Crow remained impoverished, and they continued to live in de facto segregation.
Social and economic conditions improved marginally for blacks, but they remained locked out of many job and wealth-creation opportunities. The post-WWII economic boom faded, the gap between rich and poor increased, and black families found it harder and harder to get on a ladder to prosperity.
Black voters favor Democrats overwhelmingly, perhaps because they seem to be the party that listens the most to these concerns. However, Democratic politicians haven’t delivered meaningful equality to date. Both from their own racism and from the need to safeguard themselves against attacks from the Right.
Tl;dr: Systemic racism is so deep that it infects both parties. The most aggressive proposals for tackling it (really tackling it) haven’t been given a fair hearing by either party as of yet. Though I believe that is starting to change.
Can it be repaired? Maybe not. Perhaps we’ll never overcome the original sins of our Founding. But we have to try.
