I get pretty PO'd when I read articles like this.
Certainly racism is to be condemned.
But it is a fact that in just about every culture and society in the world, people who are perceived as outsiders tend to be discriminated against and not trusted.
We are talking human nature here.
So any articles or opinions that suggest this is a problem that is "uniquely American" are totally out of whack, truth be told, we are some of the most tolerant in the world.
Human nature. What is human nature? To bleed? To fight like animals? Or to think and use one's brain to discard bad ideas and replace them with rational ones? Is it human nature to accept fate or to change it? To fight and die for faulty truths or to adapt and overcome?
But it is a fact that in just about every culture and society in the world, people who are perceived as outsiders tend to be discriminated against and not trusted.
That's a fact. But this wasn't the case with blacks in the South. I grew up with blacks. Almost everybody in the South did even if it wasn't that way in other parts of America. Been that way for hundreds of years. It is only through willfull misperception that blacks in the South could've ever been seen as 'outsiders' even if the rest of America might have viewed them as being so.
And it wasn't that blacks 'tended to be discriminated against'. They were discriminated against. 24/7.
And what to say about the word 'trust' that you used? So a man works beside you all day long, sweats just like you, has hopes and dreams just like you, has kids just like you, speaks the same language as you, fights and dies in wars for his country just like you but isn't worthy of trust because he's got a different colour skin? Human nature? That's bullsh!t. That was the way it was in the South- I grew up there and know that- and that is still the way it is in too many people's hearts and minds. Richards demonstrated that.
Believe what you want. People usually do.