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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

PP, it's no use.  Anecdotes are only persuasive to some of these PPs when it fits with the narrative of lazy, self-destructive AAs with a poor work ethic--otherwise, they'd actually have to face some uncomfortable societal truths related to haves and have-nots in our society.  Their cognitive dissonance prevents this.

Although this thread is certainly depressing on one level, I'm also heartened that there are a fair amount of white PPs who seem to get it.  For those PPs, I wonder how they came to this more complex, nuanced understanding of race in America?  One PP mentioned having a black child, but for the others--was it podcasts such as this one?  Conversations with black/Latino friends?  Marrying someone of a different race?  Whatever the reason, glad there is at least some progress on this front.
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I found Ta-Nehisi Coates' article on reparations to be very eye opening.  Not that I hadn't read any of the facts individually, but reading the whole story together was an 'aha' moment for me.  I still struggle to understand exactly what it means, or what to do about it, but I found it very convincing to admit "there was and is a systemic problem".  All else aside, I don't understand how people argue with that.[/quote]

Make sure you read his new book too. His perspective on race is different from anything else I'd read before. It really should be required reading.

As an AA I thought I had settled on a way to deal with it all in your heart and mind and he just turned it inside out for me...in a good way.[/quote]

Mr. Coates' writing was also a turning point in my own burgeoning understanding of race and opportunity in the US.  Growing up in a poor and overwhelmingly white area, I thought I understood poverty and opportunity and privately shared many of the feelings expressed on this thread ("Why can't they just.....")

Ahead of the big article about reparations, Coates wrote many smaller articles about the same topic and those articles fundamentally changed my view of my own experience and privilege.  So many of the opportunities that allowed my family to escape poverty were a combination of luck and government programs that were not available for Black Americans.  None of the reading I did about privilege or "invisible knapsacks" was as helpful to my own understanding of privilege as the realization that my own family moved into the middle class as part of a massive effort during my grandparents' generation that was largely closed to Blacks (GI Bill, FHA mortgages, Social Security).

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