Thread by @chadfelixg

The systematic racism model is described like this:

Your great great grandfather built a business that he passed to your great grandfather who passed it to your grandfather, who passed it to your father who gave it to you without you earning it.

That is the assumption.

Middle-class white families are 'privileged' because your father got his foot in the door at a company your grandfather worked at.

Then the layers of employment discrimination are applied.

They assume white families have savings and property as well.

They contrast this with black families in the same timeline, moving from slavery to Jim Crow to poverty.

A white person's great grandfather is assumed to have started closer to the finish line than a black person's great grandfather.

They ignore all evidence of white poverty and individual success from either group, focusing only on the *idea* of generational wealth.

So their solution is to take this assumed wealth and redistribute it to black people so everyone moving forward is equal.

The problem, of course, is the ignoring of the impact of leftwing social policy in the early 20th century that pushed personal debt as a form of self-investment.

It ignores the impact of generational welfare dependence.

It ignores public schooling and student debt.

The idea focuses exclusively on the reality of slavery and Jim Crow, but stops at that mark, assuming no progress after.

It also ignores that Jim Crow was not national and black individuals from many countries lived in the North and West without these same legal restrictions.

So while the theory is correct that a white person and a black person in 1880 were starting from radically different positions socially and financially in many parts of the country, it ignores all other context.

It also diminishes the successes of black families in this time.

👏 Read Thomas Sowell. 👏

Pretending America has not prioritized helping black Americans overcome the burden of slavery and Jim Crow is also dishonest.

We have implemented many widespread programs, laws and systems specifically to lift up black individuals in nearly every industry and situation.

It has been progressive policy that has placed the burden of responsibility on the state rather than the individual that has caused poverty to be so devastating not only in the black community, but across the spectrum of American experience.

It has failed generations.