On perspective

I overheard an argument this morning about the ongoing problems with race relations in our country, one persons view is that it is getting better, the other had the opposite opinion. She got rather heated about it and the discussion eventually petered out, I was in another room and wasn't sure they knew I was around so I didn't get involved.

Perspective is hard to keep when there are bodies on the floor, four women were shot dead in Washington today and I want to find a 2nd amendment supporter and hit them until they stop being stupid, but I can't do that and I have to acknowledge that firearm deaths are, technically, going down and have been for the last decade or so.

Similarly I have to disagree with the person who was negative, progress is being made, things are getting better.

But.

And this is a big but.

That says more about how bad things were than it does about how good things are now.

I mean, people, America has been pretty shit for anyone who isn't a straight white man for a long time, like, really shit, and the definition of white keeps changing too, the Irish weren't always white for example. We literally committed genocide on a scale greater than Hitler ever managed with our Native American population, it took a war that killed millions to end slavery, and untold other lives to make the law view those ex-slaves as people.

Our country is soaked in the blood of its own citizens as they fought for the rights it supposedly guarantees them.

Today the UN is actually considering chastising the USA for it's, shall we say biased, legal system with regards to race, but there hasn't been one single year in our countries entire history where the world community wouldn't be entirely justified in censuring us. Not one year.

Our only saving grace is that the same applies to basically every other country in the world to a greater or lesser extent, and at least on paper our laws protect our citizens no matter their skin color. This may seem minor, but it's actually pretty important, our laws apply equally to everyone, technically. In practice that rarely goes as intended, but the theory is sound.

Today a cop can kill a black man for any, or no, reason at all and get away with it, fifty years ago anyone could do the same. Today an employer can fire you for any reason, such as attempting to form a union, or no reason at all, a hundred years ago they could literally use the National Guard to massacre strikers. Today a Muslim man can be assaulted on the street for literally no reason at all, seventy years ago one of our most beloved presidents signed an order to intern thousands of Japanese citizens and steal their stuff.

Like, it's bad now, real bad, but it is easy to forget just how bad it was, and how far we have come. I think it helps to come up for air once in a while and see that. Of course I say that from my position of being virtually guaranteed to never experience any of the things I just mentioned and others may have a different perspective, but it seems to me that even though the way forward is knee deep in blood, at least we aren't swimming anymore.

I am not saying people shouldn't complain because it was worse in the past, fuck that, it doesn't matter how bad something was, or is for others, if it is unacceptable to you now, than it is something that must change. And like I said, it was really bad not so very long ago in ways that most of us today can't really imagine properly. There is a lot to pull out of is what I am saying here.

There is no cause for celebration, but, perhaps, there is a little cause for hope.