Jacky Smith
Sep 4, 2018 · 1 min read

Even if you deny the existence of racism today in the US (and that’s a stretch, after Standing Rock — we all saw it unwinding on our live feeds for months), you cannot deny that things like social housing and the whole rez/residential school system for indigenous people were systematically racist in the US, over many years. After all, it’s not that long ago that it was illegal to practice indigenous religion — in the “land of the free”… and what about this? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607955/inspecting-algorithms-for-bias/

This has left significant parts of the black / indigenous community with inherited financial and emotional burdens that are just not shared by even the worst off white families, although the American preference for DogEatDog and EveryManForHimself&DevilTakeTheHindmost has never been particularly good at encouraging any sort of social cohesion and has been used to penalise anyone whose parents are not rich.

You could of course rejig affirmative action to look only at the financial status of the person receiving help, rather than their “race”. I don’t think it would make much difference to the pattern of recipients, though…

    Jacky Smith

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    Activist with an interest in good food and good company.