[bendoernberg]

I've been very influenced by Isabel Wilkerson's new book to look at America as having a racial caste system that's 400 years old. The entire economic and political history and present of the United States is governed by this caste system; it's even written into the physical geography, e.g. where there is lead and where there are trees. If you don't ask about race on government forms, how are you going to measure progress on dismantling this system?

Abolishing race is a good goal, but it's going to come after we've acknowledged and reckoned with the violence and harm this country has done to so many millions of people. And we've barely even started that process.

[throwaway894345]

We can argue that there is work to do toward equality without discrediting ourselves and our objective with incredible claims about “having barely started” as though we still have slave plantations and so on.