Now imagine that your great grandparents were enslaved. Then your grandparents and parents suffered through Jim Crow. Then you go through life being slighted and made to feel like an other and anytime you achieve something, some idiot claims it was because of racial quotas and you know some others think it to themselves.

Then you are told that you didn't get the job because now (as of the day the civil rights act passed or the day Obama was elected) we no longer have racial bias in our hiring practices and we are now officially a meritocracy.

So no, I don't see a problem with a system that might slightly favor a minority because I doubt that on the whole they are actually getting any sort of advantage anyway.

97% feels oppressive when you are used to 100%.

I totally disagree, how far do we want to go back? Reparations should be provided as funding the schools, better education for poor and impoverished neighborhoods, not some kind of a $4000 check to people of color.

Why not focus on improving communities? I don't want to replace meritocracy with favored treatment one iota, doesn't matter if you were disadvantaged or not.

It is the height of hypocrisy as:

- What about native indians?

- What about asian minorities?

- What about people with disabilities?

- What about people with low IQ scores?

- What about people with low grades in schools?

- What about people that got killed by Genghis Khan?

- What about people that died in the crusades?

At this point, this whole thing lands on a shaky foundation of hypocrisy and favored treatment which is kind of ironic that that's exactly the problem you're trying to solve.

Born with a brown skin? You've got things lined up pretty good for you just because you were born brown. Born with a white skin? You've got things lined up pretty much against you just because you were born white (for the record, I am not white). This is reversing what used to happen. I don't think this is the solution, the solution is to go fix the problems in the first place - higher funding to impoverished schools, lifting up the people from poverty and letting these communities flourish. Colored or not. Instead, Democrats focus on reparations in place for meritocracy.

I want a society that stops talking about race on both sides - the oppressive and the oppressed. Color of the skin should be taught as a matter of historical context, not some kind of a revenge/reparations. Stop wasting energy on trying to undo history, instead focus on the future.

What-aboutism is not a valid argument. And there are programs in place for some of the issues in your list (none of which really stack up much to America's history of slavery and jim crow).

Who said anything about cash reparations or Democrats? Yes, programs should be better funded to make up for the past evils of our society. But what about the people here and now that are disadvantaged due to past evils and the lack of these programs in the past?

It's the pairing of past injustices with the inability to just "blend in" with the rest of the crowd that creates a special case.

If you are born poor as a black person, you are still twice as likely to remain poor.

As for your comment that being born white is some kind of disadvantage is just laughable. Look at the data, what does it tell you? The fact is, almost every statistic out there indicates the opposite.

Median net worth for black families is 1/10th that of median white family net worth in America.

You may think that your success in life is entirely dependent on your personal grit and whatever. But the reality is that wealth and success is heavily dependent upon generational wealth and social capital. Which means that those whose ancestors were enslaved and otherwise abused are by definition starting way, way back from the starting line.

You don't get to have a head-start and then halfway through the race declare that from this point forward, all rules will apply to everyone equally. You especially don't get to pretend that those that had to start way back from the start line don't have some little weights attached to their ankles (i.e. modern racial bias).

The problem with this "97% feels oppressive when you are used to 100%" view is that it's zero-sum. If we treat the racial disparity issue as a zero-sum problem, we practically guarantee the perpetuation of racial inequality and racial animosity. It takes away from individuals of one race in order to give advantages to individuals of another race, and that's rarely a recipe for a just, equitable, unified and harmonious society.

Nobody serious denies that individuals of the latter race were less likely compared to individuals of the former race to win a given prize amount in the lottery of birth, due to historical and ongoing slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, war on drugs/black families, etc. Most people believe that the historical and cultural context justifies giving members of the latter race help to "catch up".

The problem lies in the perceived taking away, factual or not: requiring higher test scores for individuals of your race for university admission, hiring less-qualified individuals of another race rather than well-qualified individuals of your race for the good corporate PR, etc. It's obvious that racial handicaps ensure a distributional qualification disparity among the races for accepted candidates. They also make it easy for candidates who don't make the cut, even if they would not have made the cut had they been members of the preferred race, to blame the preferred race for their failure. Whenever an individual of the preferred race makes a mistake or gets a bad grade or review, more people will assume that that person is simply unqualified, even if members of the non-preferred race actually make the same mistake/get the same grade/review at higher rates! As you note, this especially harms qualified members of the preferred race. The racial handicap is fertilizer for racists and sets up a pervasive subconscious racial bias that simply won't go away until the handicap is removed.

I think true progress will only be made once we avoid taking anything away or imposing any racial handicaps and gather the collective willpower to positively support disadvantaged people of all races. We need to ameliorate the stumbling blocks people face to fully developing the skills, personal character, and emotional and familial stability necessary to access opportunity. But this is an enormous task requiring huge amounts of coordination across government and civil society, and doesn't get clicks^H^H^H^H^H^H votes as well as "This One Quick Fix Will Solve Racism in 20 Years! Doctors Hate It!"

>Nobody serious denies that individuals of the latter race were less likely compared to individuals of the former race to win a given prize amount in the lottery of birth, due to historical and ongoing slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, war on drugs/black families, etc. Most people believe that the historical and cultural context justifies giving members of the latter race help to "catch up".

I have found that quite a few people seriously DO deny those facts. Look no further than several of the other responses to my comment.

As for taking things away, I agree that handicapping someone due to their race is not good. But unfortunately, society is a bit too complex to completely avoid it. The reality of many racial equality programs is not that less qualified candidates are awarded over more qualified candidates but that in cases where two candidates are effectively equal, preference is given to minority candidates. Because let's be honest, a few exam points here and there or extra-curriculars do not really make much difference.

Do you have a spreadsheet or something similar of who is more deserving based on past injustices? I'm interested how native Americans are ranked compared to black people?

It's not about comparing those injustices. It's just about knowing our American History and acting with compassion to try to right the wrongs of our past. Both Native Americans and African Americans have a special situation due to their origin story in the founding of our country. But the African American experience is also different from most others due to the more obvious visual differences between a white and black person. It allowed injustices to continue both spoken and unspoken for many, many decades, and still to this day continue both consciously and sub-consciously.

If a white person grew up poor and in a single parent home, they can put on a nice suit and go to a job interview and blend in. And I'm not necessarily just talking about today. But definitely in the very recent past. Which affects the parents of children today and their ability to provide a good education among many other things to make their children competitive.

But talking more about today, it was in the early 2000s I believe where a study was done sending out thousands of identical resumes. Some with white sounding names and others with black sounding names. The white names got 50% more callbacks than the black names. That is an astounding difference and that alone shows that we have a serious problem. I suspect if we did that today, the results would be better, but still not "color blind".

Well at the and of the day you still have to make a choice who deserves what. Since you don't want meritocracy and argue for a compassionate ideological framework you still haven't provided how people are ranked in your system. How does a Russian immigrant Igor who is white, has a bad accent, hardly speaks the language compares to Karim, a successful black business man? All I see is a group of white people arguing with an another group of white people for power and one is using minorities just so that it can call the other white group racist. No where have i seen minorities ranking themselves in the historical injustice ladder. You don't even realize how patronizing you are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2LpFkVfYk