Hello, Jeff. Thank you for reading and commenting on my article on Systemic Racism and inviting me to read and comment on this one.
I agree with you in that we could all learn from the behavior of children. Children aren't born to be racist, it is learned. I disagree with your premise that things are much better than 60 years ago and that there is no place for protests.
"And unquestionably, although the current state in the US is far from perfect, it is better than it was 60 years ago when segregation was legally enforced in the country.
Will Protesting eliminate systemic racism?
No doubt, people still face racism in 2020. The question is how to end it. The answer is complicated. To begin let’s briefly review what protesting has accomplished in the past:
During the Great Depression, rent strikes lead some cities to temporarily suspend evictions to provide some relief to the poor.
The Civil Rights movement eventually culminated in the ending of segregation in school, transportation, restaurants, medical care, housing and passing of laws to prevent employment discrimination based on race, color, gender or religion."
I submit that US laws and policies have evolved throughout history to accomplish the same end as much as possible. When slavery ended it was replaced by The Black Codes, which begat Jim Crow, and after the peak of the Civil Rights Era brought about a new Civil Rights Act, the FAir Housing Act, and the Voting Rights Act, all of them have been diminished by the courts (why do you think Mitch McConnell works so hard to install his judges) or the Executive Branch.
COINTEL which spied on black organizations in from the late '50s to 1979 has now been replaced by a secret FBI group watching "Black Identity Extremists." When that was discovered, they changed the name but little has changed in the past 60 years. Voter suppression is still the norm except that poll taxes have a new look, Gerrymandering and redistricting now accomplish what the Klan once did and it's Republicans doing the suppression which was once the Democrats role.
Protests are different in that outside groups have usurped them for their own purposes, sometimes violent. You seem to suggest that the protesters have no real motive but to cause disruption and violence and don't distinguish them and groups ranging from ANTIFA to the Boogaloo Boys. Without protest, it seems nothing gets accomplished. For the first time since John Lewis and MLK marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, there is hope for change. Police departments are revisiting chokeholds and no-knock warrants, Qualified immunity is at least under discussion. Thoughts and prayers have done just as much to end racism as they have to end gun violence.
One other thing, the comparison to the gun violence in Chicago and elsewhere is the distraction used to keep from addressing the immediate concerns of the protesters. Not that gun violence isn't a problem, but it's a different problem which shouldn't be used to obscure all other matters.
