Which is why "Class-ism" if you will.... not RACISM.... is the problem in society.
I agree that "classism" is a significant problem in our society, but the intense racism of the past is
why there is such a disproportionate percentage of minorities who are in the subjugated class than the percentage of whites in that class.
This is why so many people who are minorities in the subjugated class see it as racism. They look around and they primarily see
other minorities like them dealing with the problems that they face, while the people they encounter who do not face those problems are primarily white people. This is
why people can't just "get over it". They are
still feeling it's effects today, even if things have improved, the cumulative effects of 400 years of systematic oppression are still evident. As I said earlier, 400 years of systematic oppression does not heal in a mere 40 odd years. It just can't.
think of it on smaller terms, rather than systemically. If someone beat you viciously every single day for 20 years, and suddenly they stopped beating you every day, do you think you'd be peachy ****ing keen just two years after the beatings stopped? Highly doubtful. You'd still be feeling the effects of those 20 years of beatings. It probably wouldn't be made right within your entire lifetime. And the effects of those beatings would trickle down to your children as well, because you'd probably continue reacting to them throughout your entire life even well after they stopped (presumably some serious anger). The beatings would have helped create the person you are. So your kids might have some righteous anger at the person who beat you. They'd have dealt with the effects of it themselves, which would in turn help define who they are, and that would then affect
their children.
Overall, the effects would continue to get smaller over time, but each generation is still affected by the events that occurred in your life in some way shape or form.
Now magnify the **** out of that to an entire group of people who were subjected to similar treatment. How much would you trust the police in general if you knew that just 50 years before it was commonplace for people of your skin tone to be falsely imprisoned and even killed by police for no other reason that your skin tone? Maybe it happened to your own grandfather or great uncle. Maybe it was a friend of yours who had a grandfather who was killed/imprisoned/beaten. Let's ay you are living in that environment where you can't trust white people in uniforms to look out for you, what the **** are you going to teach your kids? I know I'd have taught
my kids to run the other way as fast as they ****ing can when a badge came walking down the street if I was living in the Jim Crow era.
And there are still remnants of this going on today. They aren't common, but they are given a ****load of press time making them seem more common than they really are. Certainly enough to continually reinforce the basic
survival skill taught to an entire group of people during the Jim Crow days.
In order to create the environment that will allow people to "get over it" we need to
stop reinforcing the cultural survival skills learned in the days of systematic oppression. This doesn't mean excusing ****ty behavior, it means not
engaging in ****ty behavior or excusing ****ty behavior. Look at the Rodney King thing. An objective observer would say "Regardless of what Rondey was doing, if five or six ***** ass cops need to beat him with night sticks to stop him, they are not fit for the ****ing badge. They are a disgrace to it." Instead, we had (and still have) cops who defend the ***** cops actions. If anything, the cops should have been the most pissed off about their colleagues actions because their actions make
all cops look like cowardly bitches who aren't fit for the badge. Instead, those ******s got off and the thin blue line reinforced the idea that black people cannot and should not trust cops.
That's not 50 years ago, it's 20 years ago and less than 30 years after the era of it not being all that uncommon to hear about the lynching of black people coming to an "end" (meaning a 30-something year old at the time of th erodney king beating could easily have been the child of a dude who got lynched by racists). That's a reinforced lack of trust in the police right there. The parents of children form that time were people who were directly exposed to such blatant, systemic racism in some way. A 30 year old black person at that time was pretty much
guaranteed to teach his/her kids not to trust the cops. Those kids could be what, 20, 25 now?
Add in the noticeable effects of classism and the effects of racism of the past on the demographics of today and then imagine yourself in their position. I know I wouldn't be "over it" if I was in their shoes. I certainly do not expect others to do what I know I could not.