There is systemic, even institutional racism and sexism at work in America.
Selection By Identity.
Corporations and government are imbued in the policy - formal and informal - of selecting employees and leadership on the basis of skin color, gender, sexual propensity, and religious opinion. A growing parade of people with the "correct" identities are stepping on other candidates who have done nothing wrong, committed no sin, and may be individually more qualified for selection. The only fault of the downtrodden is they are male, "white" (whatever "white" means), outed heterosexuals, or devout.
Reparation Plans.
Cities and states are drumming up pay-outs for people who were never slaves from people who were never slave owners. In fact, many of those proposed to pay reparations have ancestors who gave military service in the Civil War to free slaves. Over a hundred thousand Union soldiers and sailors even gave the full measure of devotion - death. Do Union soldier descendants also get reparations? Should those Union soldier reparations be paid by modern "black" residents of America (whatever "black" means)? How incredibly insulting, monstrous, and dumb all of it is.
Affirmative Action.
Fifty years ago we were told that minorities needed to be artificially placed at the head of the scholarship and hiring lines in order to "make up" for past discrimination. In other words, to cure racial discrimination by instituting reverse racial discrimination. Whether it was busing, college scholarships, funding for farmers and business owners, and employment quotas for persons with dark skin coloring or from certain population demographics (Eskimo, American indian, Latino, Female, etc), it was advertised and sold as a "temporary" expedient. But it's become a permanent bias.
Title 9 Advantages.
Women, who make up the majority of the US population as well as university student bodies, have carved out for them a posh stack of female scholarships and exclusive female facilities to the disadvantage of their male classmates. Title 9 was a good idea in concept, but a horribly destructive and cruel policy in implementation. Young men engaged in the same disciplines or sports as women have almost no equal opportunities in activities like track, tennis, swimming, hockey, rowing, volleyball, soccer, gymnastics, for example. Women get scholarships. Men don't, victims of official state prejudice.
Public School Discrimination.
Beginning in grade school, a large swath of public education instructs children they are either intrinsically virtuous oppressed people or, on the other hand, intrinsically predestined to be racial and gender oppressors. With Christians being worse than other religions too. The insane Critical Race Theory pogrom has been sheltered at school board meetings by the US Department of Justice. And, as we've recently seen in Virginia, school administrators have withheld grade scores from high achievers to foil merit scholarships.
All of this chaos has resulted in massive unintended (or were they?) consequences.
Boys are claiming they are girls, whether physically transitioning or whether simply "identifying" as female. This is the natural outcome of "Identity" rights, isn't it? If one gender gets more opportunities than the other (others?), then market forces will inevitably apply.
Asian parents are suing Harvard and Yale over lost opportunities and scholarships for their children. Racial quotas or "targets" for less-meritorious candidates who have different skin colors is an outrage. How can such a thing be legal in a post-MLK America?
San Francisco's and California's slavery reparations task forces are recommending as much as $5M per individual black (whatever "black" means) resident. Are we to witness "race courts" like the Nazis used to determine who is "black" and who isn't? And who is a slave descendant and who isn't?
My Catholic Irish mother would have a lot to say about indentured servitude suffered by her people in primordial American history. It was slavery, plain and simple. And about her ancestor who died to free slaves at the hands of the Confederacy. Study up on the suffering of the Irish - before and after their arrival in America - and get back to me. Where are their reparations?
So, yes, there is a LOT of institutional systemic racism, sexism, religious oppression, and lifestyle bias built into US and state governments and the business sector. But it's not against blacks (whatever "black" means) or women (whatever "women" means - not even our newest Supreme Court justice can tell us what a woman is).
There is prejudice against the leftovers in the United States of America: men (whatever a "man" is), non-blacks (whatever a "non-black" is), and Christians and Jews.
You will note I mention a lot of "whatever"'s.
That's because I never look at skin color. I don't know what a "black" is or what a "white" is. Is former President Obama, for example, "white" or "black"? He seemed to care a whole lot about the answer to that question! I do not. I don't even care about my own ancestry, which is highly likely to include black African DNA. It doesn't matter to me one way or the other. No 23-And-Me test, I'm not the least bit interested in my "whiteness" or "blackness". Neither are any more commendable than my ten fingers or ten toes. In fact, can't I legitimately "identify" as any color anyway? Pfffft!!
What I do care about is what Dr. King taught me as a child.
You are what you do. You are defined by your heart. By your love of others. By your achievements and service. That's who and what a person is. Not their pigmentation or sex organs. But their character.
The obsession this country has with race, ginned up by professional race baiters of all colors, is corrosive to the body politic. It is literally killing people and drumming up false narratives about cops, about political parties, about history, about voting rights, about immigration policy, about equal opportunity, about capitalism, about everything.
We need to get over racial and gender grievances. And soon.
We are not passing down opportunities and cohesiveness to future generations. We are fostering perpetual cycles of hate and anger, which is being exploited by our global enemies and hollowing out goodwill and civic harmony here in the homeland.
