SOME blacks yes. However, not anywhere close to achieving parity with whites. Certainly not enough to overcome the systemic racism caused by having whites dominating business, education, politics.

I agree with you on the effects of slavery and I don’t deny those persistent racial disparities, but it is also true that despite such hardships of the past, there have been significant increase in the African American community in the middle class status for the past 55 years. It is also true blacks have been able to achieve numerous powerful positions in the realms of business, education, economics, engineering, and politics. That why I said before, when it comes to the existence of systemic racism and white privilege, the reality is very complicated.

I was never defending the killing of George Floyd

You sort of are just a bit though. Asking how he got under that police car, saying Floyd was noncomplying, describing Chauvin’s actions as “holding his neck”, implying that the update to the autopsy report was somehow suspicious because it was announced by a black officer. I don’t know what the purpose of saying those thing is unless it’s an attempt to somehow mitigate the crime.

I am vehemently against labeling it as a racially motivated hate crime murder

The fact is, we don’t know Chauvin’s motivations. He could be a totally equal opportunity brutal cop, but that’s kind of beside the point. Black men are killed by police at a disproportionally high rate compared to white people. That’s is the definition of systemic racism. You can’t look at any *one* case and say race was the only factor. But, in the aggregate, after all the numbers are counted, black people are stopped more, searched more, arrested more, charged more, convicted more, sentenced higher, and killed by police more. Why? How do we make our justice system more equitable? That is why people are crying out. Floyd is part of the broader pattern and a particularly egregious case.

WRT to Yankel Rosenbaum, you are fighting a straw man. No one says sometimes white people are mistreated by blacks. That it’s somehow beyond the realm of possibility. What we say is systemic racism against black people is a much bigger problem at the moment. And literally no one would get in trouble for factually reporting the case of Yankel Rosenbaum. What might get you labeled a racist though is to bring it up right after a black man is unjustly murdered and use that case to argue that it somehow nullifies that unjust killing. Two wrongs do not make a right.

The point is that when POCs get the opportunity to have positions of power, they can become oppressors themselves.

Let’s agree to cross that bridge when we get to it, buddy. And when and if it happens, I’ll be right beside you, metaphorically speaking.

it’s an “ideology” really, that’s what you think it is. So you don’t think centuries of slavery and oppression haven’t had any effect on the racial disparities in the US? What do you attribute those persistent racial disparities too then?

It could be possible that it was a hate crime and if it can be proven during the trial, then the perpetrators should by punished accordingly. The issue is that a bunch of hoodlums are already determined that it was a hate crime in order to justify destruction of property and violent attacks on the police and innocent white people. To me, the systemic racism is an ideology which can be easily refuted.