I've always been amazed at how when the black community mentions something to do with race, it's always seen as if we are making up some kind of elaborate fiction solely for slandering the United States.

> I've always been amazed at how when the black community mentions something to do with race, it's always seen as if we are making up some kind of elaborate fiction solely for slandering the United States.

That wasn't my claim, and you know it. I'm happy to be wrong, I'm just trying to make sense of the contrast between the data and public opinion. I'm genuinely very sorry for any emotional distress this debate causes and I know that the distress it's very one-sided, but I don't know how we are going to make social progress apart from real dialogue (both across political lines as well as racial lines). Why malign people who are trying to understand and help?

This stuff is highly charged. Doing it over text messages just makes things harder.

I appreciate you are doing it good faith, but 400 years of blood makes for murky waters.

I understand and agree. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

I'm always doing research on this subject, including speaking with members of these communities. I agree that it's important. There's also a lot of nuance that my comment glossed over, for brevity.

EDIT: In fact, my desire for better dialog and my ongoing research are both motivated by a desire (for me personally and for our society more broadly) to better understand and fix the problem.