It's easy to blame the right for the horrible systems facing people of color. The anti-government instincts on the right, and the assumption that institutions are treating people fairly (connected strongly to white fragility), and the compounding effects of implicit bias, are part of a system enabled by the denial and pretense on the right. The dog-whistle appeals to racism, which would never have been acceptable to the Republican party before Nixon's Southern Strategy, and the natural authoritarianism that put wind in the "law and order" sails, all make the Republican party from Reagan on look like the villains of the piece, because they have accepted that role and walked hand in hand with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh playing many of the same games.ant wrote:Of course the unchecked mayhem and violence in democratic run cities is the fault of the republicans.
But as I think about what would really make a difference, it looks to me like the requirement is courage that the Democrats don't really have much more of. Two states have made serious efforts to integrate housing: New Jersey and Hawaii. In New Jersey's case it was driven by the courts. The country still has a pitiful record of facing up to the legacy of our racist past by simply putting affordable housing in every single suburb (looking at you, Westchester County and Marin County and Hamptons) and showing zero tolerance for intolerance. Follow up is necessary - jobs and fitting in and learning to be respectable rather than just fighting to be treated with respect are all barriers that need some assistance to get past. Human relationship is essential to helping people make those transitions. But until housing is desegregated, those personal kinds of assistance can never happen.
But instead of actually taking courage, we point fingers at the Republicans, (who are, in fact, guilty of riding the racism current,) even though the Democrats were, up until Trump, mainly doing better only in the sense that they said the right things. Now we have a President and a party pushing judicial activism to reinforce racism, and who regularly back harmful policies, so the situation is rather different. But it is still true that the real sources of our society's gross racial inequality are going unaddressed and almost unmentioned.
I wonder if a candidate like Kamala Harris, willing to let it be personal on the vulnerable side, might be what it takes.