System or Self?

I agree with your assessment of the Japanese/USA example of heightened racism. It is possible that kind of result might occur — but, two critical differences would exist in a movement of businesses not lead by white guys: (1) these companies would not be homogenous, and (2) these companies would be inside the borders.

I can’t be sure those two differences would make the difference.

[ *Note: the racism persisted even after the decline of the Japanese economy in the 90’s. This was called the Lost Decade, when Japanese culture and life actually got better. It was a narrative spun by Western ideologues — but, it was inherently racist. ]

Unfortunately, there is a bigger argument holding back progress on race. It reared it’s head this morning when my story was recommended by a reader and one of their friends responded with this:

It’s similar to your comment above:

It might also be said that capitalism is basically an exploitative and discriminatory system.

Capitalism.

If we look back to 1970 — specifically September 13th in the New York Times, we can see where it all started to go pear shaped for modern capitalism. Milton Friedman declared that directors worrying about anything other than shareholder value were socialists.

He was wrong.

But, he won the Nobel Prize for Economics 5 years later and we paid the price. Fortunately, some stalwart organisations (Harvard Business School, The Economist) are paying a little more than lip service to rebutting this argument. To be sure, there is still a long way to go.

I read a book back in 2010, The Puritan Gift, and uncovered some home truths about capitalism and its roots in both a productive economy and society. It’s not a perfect book, but as a young social entrepreneur it provided me a glimpse of how good our existing capitalist system could be for society — if operated properly.

It’s not the system, it’s the people.

There might be better systems than capitalism, but I think we need to fix ourselves before we fix the system.

Thanks for your considered response.

Peace.