"Every economic, academic, legal and social system in this country has for more than three centuries functioned with the implicit purpose of ensuring that white men are the primary benefactors of all privilege."
Implicit purpose? No, for generations it was pretty plainly expressed, both in social convention and, to some extent, in the law itself. And while it's difficult to upend the ethnocentric driven momentum of power in this country, until the rich began to ensure the slow, tortuous death of the middle class, minorities were expanding into the upper and middle strata, gaining ground.
Real progress has been made. More needs to be.
Her response to the plight of a young man in need of common sense reminds me a good deal of how more than a few here felt about a woman who was attacked coming home from a bar. The old "she was asking for it" applied to a different scenario. I didn't think much of that then and I don't value it now (I see anna noted that as well).
The writer is investing a young man who made a stupid mistake with a host of unrelated sins he can't rightly be held accountable for. She can't get past color and the complaints that attend it to see the blood and suffering beneath it. That's a sad thing to see in someone who has more reason than the young man to see the error and danger in that thinking...It's a shame her earlier compassion and head shaking over her mother's comments haven't translated to her maturity. Her mother might be proud of it, but she knew better once.
It's a compounding of errors to no good end and little illumination. Here's hoping the outcome, his death, will lead her to reexamine.
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