On social (in)justice, Black Lives Matter, et al...

Of all the events that sprang up in the last couple of years, was the Black Lives Matter movement. Not that I have any immediate insight to it, nor was I ever directly impacted by it, but just some random thoughts that might worth jotting down in my journal.

There was much injustice against the African-Americans as a race historically, that much is beyond dispute. From the perspective of the modern times, who could ever argue for slavery afterall? It is also without doubt that United States, as a nation, had benefited enormously from the slave trade in the centuries past. One could say the nation and economy could not have flourished without the benefits of slave labor. The horrific of treating another human being as commodity, a cargo that could be bought and sold, is simply too wrong to comprehend.

Much injustice (genocide, land seizure, enslavement, permanent displacement, and more) had also been done to other groups, like the indigenous people of Native Indians.

In fact, United States had many a company in this department. Just ask Australia, and how the whites in the bygone eras had treated the native aborigines. Or, any of the western European countries in their expeditions and colonization of Africa and South America. The list goes on.

The questions for us now are, what do we do about it, now? How do we treat the history? How to make amends? How far do we go when enough is enough? How to make sure history doesn't repeat itself? And, who should be paying the price for past wrongdoing?

I'm not a historian, I'm not even black, nor white. I'm just one of many latecomers to this New Land. For all the public discourse, outcry, events, and more about social (in)justice, racial issues, and discrimination, I do have some thoughts from my vantage point.

African-Americans (I'll use the term, with blacks, interchangeably here since it's a few less characters to type) are pioneers in the struggle for social justice and the civil rights movement. Anyone who came after them has to thank them for it as they benefit inherently from the civil rights and progress gained. There is at least no more redlining, segregation, at least the legal protection against those practices.

Along the way, every generations seem some form of injustice, from the internment of Japanese-Americans during the WWII, to the Chinese Exclusion Act that lasted more than sixty years, to the overt hostility of Muslims in the early years of the 21st century, epitomized by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election season when he openly suggested banning Muslims into US.

As each wave of migrants overcame the hostility, hardship, and assimilation, they move up the economic ladder and economic ladder, given social mobility. That much was true with the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and the Asians. Many African-Americans rode that wave too, although given the size of the black population, many more seem to have been left behind in ghetto-like conditions, with dimming education and employment prospect.

It did not help that over the decades, many wrongs were done to the blacks as a group, from the erstwhile Tuskegee experiment, the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s, to the unfair justice system, and now police brutality incidents that spawn the Black Lives Matter Movement. There is little wonder that the blacks mistrust the police. I totally get that. Whenever there is crime where the perps (police or otherwise) are white and victims are blacks (or minority), social media lit up. There is an almost conceived notion that the whites must be wrong, and the blacks are wronged, yet again. One has to say, it's decidedly not fashionable to be white these days.

These days, when I read stories or news, it's easy to hear how the narratives are shaped, depending on the reporter's leaning. There are times when I hear stories like the alleged gang rape by Nate Parker, or the serial sexual assaults by Bill Crosby over a number of decades, I feel the need to yell "Who cares if the perp is black, or not?" To me, as long as the crimes are established, they should be punished for it. They should not get a pass, just because their skin is black. Riding on the backs of their black ancestors is simply shameless. And for those to compare one crime to another interchangeably, it's just wrong.

It is almost fashionable too, to revisit slavery and to rewrite history by erasing it, like the cases where college students wanting to rename building names, or take down statutes, citing reasons of intimidation, or that by preserving certain part of history or traditions, it's tacit endorsement of past practices. But, can such actions really do anything? I'd bet you all the money too, that 99.99999% of the students going through those buildings (that named after some slave masters a few centuries ago) don't think of it at all. So, why wasting all the efforts, blowing all these hot air, to drag everything through the mud again?

How far back can and should we go in order to atone to historic sins? Should all the whites go back to their ancestral homeland (of England, or Germany, or some such), and give the land back to the native Indians? And in a land of immigrants like United States, where many of them have had no ancestors whatsoever that did those past wrongs, should they be punished too, just because they are now firmly Americans?

Ultimately, I'm getting so tired of the mention of it, every time someone plays up the race card, or gender card, whatever, in order to justify their point. It's like, someone was killed, but no, the perp was not to blame because, hey, he's black, he can't be blamed. He came from broken homes, he's poor, he suffers from discrimination, etc etc. (You can easily replace the word "black" with anything, like "hispanic", or simply "minority".)

We should all be compassionate for others and their suffering. Yet, there is literally no way to tease out how much of it was due to historic wrongs, society's faults, or one's own willful wrongdoing. There is no way you can play what-if, or hold control studies, on whether someone might turn out differently if, say, his skin is white but not black, or if his parents earn six-figure salary versus toll some manual jobs.

One interesting case in point, is the model minority of Asian-Americans (in particular, Chinese-Americans) when it comes to how one might rise above one's station, overcome discrimination, bootstrap for better education, better employment, and more. While this group takes up just 5% of total US population, a group that was discriminated upon for so many decades, they now on average beat every other group, including, yes, the whites, in terms of education level, employment rate, wealth accumulation, home ownership rate, and more. And they did it, all without much help (or welfare) from the government. How did they do it?

(One should give credit where it's due, and Asian-Americans, as with all other minority groups that came after the black slaves, have reaped benefits from the Civil Rights movement too. One must not forget that. But, so does every other minority group, including, yes, the blacks themselves too.)

I'm a regular reader of New York Times. I like its in-depth reporting in general. But I have to say, there are many a times when reading NYT columns or reporting can get me all roiled up. The easiest argument, the default argument, is always that government has to do more, to help, to make amend, to right the wrongs. No doubt there are many cases where that is true. But c'mon, when do we start to talk about personal responsibility?