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Re:A small town, a chemical plant and the residents' despera... by jbay808 on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @01:04PM (#19851310)
Does the concept pay rent though? There are a lot of ways to end up powerless and marginalized; a legacy of racism is one but I named a few others. Generally the concept that encompasses the result of a group of people being marginalized, irrespective of how it happened, is class.

Does it sufficiently capture reality to say that this discrimination happens to the lower class? In that case, "systemic racism" is mostly acting as shorthand for statistics that black people have less wealth on average, and points to an explanation of why. Or does this happen to black communities over and above that of other communities of comparable wealth? In that case, it makes sense to say that racism is a separate factor, beyond just economics.

I guess what I'm saying is, these are two different concepts with two different implied solutions:

A) A history of racism is why black communities are poor, and all poor communities equally suffer these burdens.

B) Black communities suffer these burdens over and above equally poor communities.

In case A, measures to increase wealth equality might solve the problem. In case B, that might not be sufficient, and deeper causes of lingering racist discrimination might need to be sought.

Just labeling the issue "systemic racism" does more to confuse rather than clarify how to solve it, I think.

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