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Comment by nogenerix | Hacker News Reader

When someone presents all these negative outcomes for minority groups (education, poverty, incarceration, etc.) it's difficult to not see that in a racial light.

"Madison is one of the greatest places to live, just stay out of the black neighborhoods." - how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?

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The lenders for white neighborhoods formed explicit covenants to keep blacks out. White people chose to live in those neighborhoods and voted for lawmakers who supported redlining and other segregationist measures. They didn’t speak up for their black neighbors with less opportunity. For decades they have been silent and complicit as they live in their white neighborhoods and build generational wealth that has been denied to blacks. They may not have explicitly shunned blacks from their neighborhoods, but they certainly turned a blind eye.

> how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?

They aren’t necessarily to be blamed for that. This blog post isn’t really assigning blame to white homeowners.

I just heard Tim Wise make an interesting argument that one of the perpetuating factors in systemic white supremacy is that there is an aspect of its culture that blinds its adherents to the truth. In his argument, the blinder was the idea of American Meritocracy, where one's lot in life is decided by how hard one is willing to work.

Just based on the evidence we have, this is plainly not the case. Last I read, the biggest factor in determining your level of wealth is how wealthy your parents were a few years before you were born. But from an institutional perspective, this belief makes it easy to point to black people and say 'they are poor because they are lazy and we have some degree of wealth because we worked so hard'.

I found this opinion piece to be worth considering, and relevant to the context of your question:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-race-...

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