Quote:
Originally Posted by BoLevi
That's a bit disingenuous as the residential school program that we really reference was discontinued long before that. 50 years isn't a long period of time. But it's long enough to have it be "historical" rather the currently relevant as a data point that society is "systemically racist".
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That's my understanding of what "systemic racism" is.
Something happens in the past, where a specific group is disadvantaged. For example, their wealth is removed, they are enslaved, imprisoned, denied equal rights to employment and housing, taken from their families, abused, or some combination of all of these.
Those people end up in poverty, addiction, incarcerated etc, and generally make pretty poor parents as a result. Now their kids grow up in bad conditions, and are also predisposed to be poor parents and not give their kids the opportunities that they should have.
Things that were way back in the past can echo for a long time. I'm not sure if anyone really has a good understanding of how to effectively break those cycles entirely. There are certainly no quick fixes, and at the very least, it's a multigenerational problem, that lasts significantly more than 50 years, all because of a potentially short period of direct, overt racism in comparison.