I can't seem to find the post I wanted to quote, so I'll just wing it. Also, this isn't really meant to be a omg-you're-so-wrong post, but just an explanation of why I believe that people of color in America are still systematically oppressed. If anyone is interested, I highly recommend the book
Racism without Racists. It's obviously a much more well-researched and persuasive text than this post will be, and you can find it online for free pretty easily.
You probably think I'm racist.
For whatever it's worth, I unequivocally do not think that you're a racist, and nothing you've said in this thread makes me think otherwise. Our viewpoints likely only diverge from one another in just a few places.
I also don't think that systematic marginalization of people of color in America
requires anyone in it to hate racial minorities.
On institutional racism.
I don't think that racism originates in institutions. My original statement was that people of color are, in my view,
systematically oppressed. By that I mean that they are discriminated against and marginalized systematically, i.e. as a class; and, that this oppression/discrimination/marginalization is exogenous to skin color. I believe that that marginalization comes from a multiplicity of sources, some of them institutional (more on that shortly), but most of them diffuse and subtle.
On falsifiability
Statements that take the form "All
x are
y," or "No
x is
y," are definitely falsifiable. All swans are white. No swan is black. Totally falsifiable. I don't see why similar statements, like, "No race in America is systematically marginalized," can't be falsified in principle. It might be difficult, but I see no reason why we can't treat it as a null hypothesis and get to work crunching numbers.
Ultimately, though, I dislike falsifiability as a criterion for belief in this arena. It's too close to logical positivism for my comfort. The premise that falsifiability should be my criterion for belief is itself unfalsifiable. The preponderance of evidence and a healthy dose of skepticism is good enough for me.
There is no evidence to support your claims.
This was your original claim, so I'll round things off here. Again, I suspect that you will find these things unpersuasive, and that's no big deal. But, for whatever it's worth, here are some of the broad strokes that cause me to believe that people of color are marginalized in American society:
(1) The most obvious in my mind is that people of color in America describe themselves as marginalized and without equality of opportunity. There is an abundance of narratives to this effect in both academic and popular literature/media. Not only are the narratives consistent with one another, but also they're consistent with the narratives of other peoples we know were/are oppressed and marginalized. I have no reason or method to dispute such consistency across millions of accounts.
(2) There's plenty of empirical research that demonstrates the existence of racial bias in many settings. It's difficult for me to believe that this bias is unrelated to the material disparity between whites and people of color. Here is a typical example:
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-a0035663.pdfWe find converging evidence that Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers. Further, our findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children.
(3) There are plenty of institutional sources of marginalization and oppression that don't on face discriminate against people of color, and thus can't be solved by Equal Protection. Property taxes are an excellent example. Poor urban communities (mostly people of color) face a massive disparity in spending on education, parks, libraries, police and fire, road maintenance, etc. That white students overwhelmingly get better access to education alone is, to me, hugely debilitating to black communities.
(4) History is still super relevant to me, and I think that centuries and centuries of literal enslavement are very relevant to the material conditions of today's minority communities. Even if it were true that racial bias largely disappeared in the second half of the 20th century, I don't see how that alone can even come close to equalizing racial disparity in America today.
These are just some examples, but I'm sure you get the idea at this point.
On WWII
Entirely lightheartedly, I'll totally have a history fight with you. I dunno anything about your family's migration (obviously), but I'd be shocked if one couldn't make the case that your current citizenship is a consequence of WWII. And your current citizenship has an obvious impact on your current/potential material conditions. It's hard for me to see how WWII is 'over' in that sense, either for you or your grandfather.