Furthermore...

It’s occurred to me, and many, I’d imagine, that the festering racial tensions and systemic racism of which the prattling pundits speak so often are just not that evident in the lives of most.  In the course of daily life, I just don’t see the systemic racism and white privilege that supposedly sustain the “patriarchy.”

Should I mention here that I live in Houston’s Third Ward and am hardly a stranger to interacting with people of various ethnicities?

What of white privilege? This is purely and simply an exercise in assigning collective guilt and collective guilt has long been a preferred tool of fascist and socialist dictators.

When you deny any group of people their own individual moral agency, you effectively sever any connection between personal behavior and consequences. It’s not hard to understand that if you punish indiscriminately, your subject cannot logically connect their actions with punishment or reward and will not appreciate why it is preferable to not be ill-behaved.

So, this balm of collective guilt is somehow supposed to result in a better-behaved society? Really? That makes no sense.

However, it is decidedly easier to group people into classes and apply blanket observations than to contemplate both individual behavior and the collective product of those individual perceptions and agendas.

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

-         Aldous Huxley

And what of systemic racism? This American society had brought itself to a point light years ahead of the rest of the world in race relations up to the early part of this century but things have deteriorated since then. Why? Because racial discrimination is too powerful a galvanizing political tool to let it become a bygone. As noted elsewhere in a document I can’t link right now, “The reality of the Democrat political philosophy is simple: the acquisition and consolidation of power is of paramount importance; all other considerations are secondary, including national pride, respect for history, the rule of law, etc.”

As has been observed many times, racial politics is a subset of identity politics that services the old concept of “divided we fall.”

Just that the concept of microaggressions has surfaced tells you the racialists had to take a magnifying glass to ordinary social interactions to conjure up something that is labeled racial animosity of which the supposed perpetrators are both unaware and powerless to stop. Tearing someone else down does not effectively benefit another individual, but it can be a valuable tool for political leadership to cultivate passion within their following.

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

-          Aldous Huxley

We hear regularly of the statistics that present black Americans as an underprivileged group with a significant number experiencing chronic poverty and unemployment. Yet there are many black professionals and business people who do well. It’s not impossible to succeed, but it’s harder if you are born into a background of deficient upbringing that propels one into adulthood without social or job skills. While that may describe a disproportionately large group of American blacks, there are also large numbers of whites, hispanics, and others of similar backgrounds who lack the skills to get ahead. Rather than approaching such a problem along racial lines, wouldn’t it make more sense to address the needs of all who are lacking?

Yes, of course, it does, but that will not answer the power lust of the current ruling class.

One thing to keep in mind is that those who adopt the identity of the oppressed rarely desire some sort of universal, egalitarian and fair social justice. No, I think generally they desire the position of the oppressor.

And the beat goes on...

But for individuals, it seems the most productive approach is to consider that we all start out with different and various advantages and disadvantages, and one needs to plan from where they are, individually.