While it is true that change needs time, actual change has to take place.

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Jul 9, 2016

And we don’t expect that in my lifetime, maybe not in my children’s lifetime, that all the vestiges of that past will have been cured, will have been solved, but we can do better. People of goodwill can do better.

President Obama on the Fatal Shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile

The White House

20019

While it is true that change needs time, actual change has to take place. Yes, African Americans (and other minorities) might be in a better position today than they were a little over fifty years ago when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended all state and local laws requiring segregation, but you can’t legislate people’s thoughts and mindsets. It is the latent racism still existing in many Americans — which is even handed down generation to generation — that is driving the still existing disparities between white Americans and minorities.

Yes, the situation will slowly get better with better training for law enforcement officers but will better training really end the problem? The legal system is just one of the many facets of the problem. What America needs is a better education for children and young adults regarding social disparities, an education focusing on the problems minorities experience and also focusing on tolerance. An education based on science, showing that people of any origin are not inherently worse than white Americans. Then and only then there is a chance that younger generations will not mindlessly accept and take on their parent’s latent racism but that racism might slowly die out.

Laws can help streamlining the process, but without really changing what people believe there will always be disparities, some minor, some big, some open, some hidden.