"Police get solid wages, great benefits, and a respected place in their
communities. For elites to write them off as racists is a telling example of
how, although race- and sex-based insults are no longer acceptable in polite
society, class-based insults still are."
Williams demonstrates, yet again, that _we_ are not doing our job. The
para-military thugs who shoot our black men are not intentionally racist. They
are taught to behave that way, taught by a (at least) 2 layer system: 1)
explicit training in military style tactics, treating the community members as
an enemy ("stop resisting") and 2) a much deeper societal, systemic portrayal
of black men as a (dangerous) other. (FWIW, there are similar forces for all
demographics ... we all harbor implicit bias.)
For Williams to mistake an accusation of systemic racism for an accusation of
_personal_ racism demonstrates that those of us who do work on complex systems
(including cybernetics, systems science, evolutionary systems, etc.) have
failed to communicate that attributes of the whole are not attributes of the
parts.
On the other hand, perhaps Williams understands these people who impose
ignorance on themselves because she imposes ignorance on herself. The Black
Lives Matter community has made it exceptionally clear that they are targeting
systemic, not personal, racism. If Williams can't hear it, then she's simply
deaf.
On 11/13/2016 05:51 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Another relevant article
>
> https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class
--
␦glen?
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