> Perhaps I'm applying my own personal experiences a bit too much here, but what worries me especially is the effect is has on self-confidence of these kids. It's fine to have these kind of discussions in politics or academia, but teaching them to kids? I find it worrying.
Agreed. I think "systemic racism" is a bad name for quantifiable disparities that, in an academic context, can be show to exist using facts and statistics. That doesn't mean you should teach it to kids, especially using labels that were specifically chosen to make them think their neighbors are out to get them.
"White supremacy," by contrast, doesn't exist, and it's absurd to pretend it does in a country where whites are poorer than several immigrant demographics, and are effectively underrepresented in elite colleges, Silicon Valley, etc.
As you observe, these discussions are politically fraught. I would prefer to stay out of them. But this sort of teaching and rhetoric has been extended to Asians now, and as someone with Asian kids I can't ignore it anymore.
Just because you personally haven't experienced it does not mean it doesn't exist. That's such a self-evident logical fallacy it shouldn't even need to be stated.
Systemic racism means that people are treated badly for the same reasons. It's why black lawyers are regularly asked if they're the defendant in court, why black youths are stopped and searched far more often than white youths, why there are obvious differentials in sentencing for identical crimes... and so on.
If you think these discussions are fraught, consider the position of those for whom this is about everyday experience and not just about "discussion" or "rhetoric."
I can't blame them for making this misdiagnosis though. I grew up in a single-parent household. My mum was essentially a deadbeat mum who could hardly be arsed to take care of her kids (or be arsed to do anything else for that matter, like, say, have a job). While she was only rarely physically abusive, she was very emotionally abusive, as well as just neglecting in her parental role. She always acts like everyone else is wrong; to this day she bitches and moans about how everyone else wrongs her all the time. Everything I did as a child was wrong somehow. Her TIV is high.
Furthermore, I was bullied a lot at school; I was already quite insecure, and this only made it worse. Kids can be very mean, and the insecure shy kid is a good target. This was at a time when it was shrugged off with "boys will be boys" so little was done about this from the school other than send me to Teakwando lessons :-/
For most of my teens and twenties I felt horribly insecure in all sorts of ways. I didn't have the courage to actually apply for a programming job until I was 25. For a very long time I felt like people being nice to me were just humouring me; this was extremely silly and paranoid, and I let many potential friendships pass me by just because I was too insecure to actually ask people if they're keen to have a drink or whatever. At the time though, it was extremely hard to get over this. This didn't really change until I had my first girlfriend at 27.
It's no surprise I was diagnosed with autism, even though it was wrong. My problems mostly weren't inherent to my character, they were just results from my attitude.
This only made it worse; well-intentioned and empathic as the youth care[1] people were, they basically just see you as a victim to be pampered. It certainly didn't help me move forward, as all you feel is "woe is me", and the constant focus on your shortcomings is essentially just an assault on your self-confidence.
If I look at myself from 15 years ago vs. now then in many ways I'm the same person: I still like the same things, my politics are still similar, I have the same sense of humour, etc. But in many ways I couldn't be more different. It was a slow change that took about 4 years; there was never an "aha!" epiphany. This isn't an intellectual thing anyway, it's an emotional thing and overriding emotion with intellect is often very hard. People with depression can't be fixed by telling them there is nothing to be depressed about, and insecure people can't be fixed by telling them there is nothing to be insecure about.
Now, the context and situation is completely different than yours, but the point of the story is that how you see yourself, and see yourself in relation to others is extremely important. In fact, I'll go out on a limb here and claim it's one of the major factors determining your success and happiness in life (however you may measure these things), perhaps even the most important factor.
Perhaps I'm applying my own personal experiences a bit too much here, but what worries me especially is the effect is has on self-confidence of these kids. It's fine to have these kind of discussions in politics or academia, but teaching them to kids? I find it worrying. I think a more "deal with it" message along the lines of "yeah, you're gonna encounter racism and it sucks, you're still a great person with a lot of talents, so just deal with it" would be a lot better. It's unfair, but it is what it is, and if the end-goal is to empower black people then we should focus on what is effective, not what is perceived as "fair".
Perhaps this is also partly why both Asians and Latino people tend to do so much better than black people: a more positive empowering attitude in spite of racist obstacles. I think it's unfortunate that questions such as "what do these people do better?" are often explained as victim blaming of black people. In spite of mountains of text being written on this, especially in the last year, I find there's a sore lack of careful analysis on this topic as everything is infused with judgements and morality which clouds everything. Just the other day a HN discussion on the best messaging on these topics netted me a "white supremacy apologist" accusation/insult :-/
In the end, a lot of these questions are empirical questions, and should be answered as such. What you then do with the answers is very much a morality question, but it's an entirely different thing.
[1]: (presumably the US works different, but in the Netherlands kids with these kind of issues are more or less automatically enrolled in our communist Nazi socialist despotic "youth care" service, more or less like CPS except also for every-day normal guidance and counselling, and not just protection).