Originally posted by midnight Target
What you really saw were the poorest people in our country. You saw people who were desperate and undereducated and hungry and yes even criminally minded in some cases. You saw some who were victims of horrible circumstance and some who were taking advantage of the situation.
Unfortunately all you chose to register in your mind was the color of the skin on those people. Bigotry in any form is wrong.
The reason is that the state of being poor doesn't stick out, to the eye, the same way the state of being of a certain color does. That and the unarguable fact that in this country, a black man is statistically more likely to be poor, more likely to wind up in prison, than a white man. If this is not common knowledge, it is certainly common suspicion.
Now the reason why black people are more likely to suffer from poverty, or be jailed, is the root of all this bigotry. If they are at fault for the cycles of poverty and criminal behavior, then the bad reputation they earn their entire race isn't quite so shocking, now is it?
You can't blame a common observer for playing the odds in making a character judgment based on skin-color when this character judgment, as much as you hate it, is more often right than wrong.
If they are innocent, however, and fall into these cycles because of somebody else, then yes, the pigeonholing is very cruel--to those that managed to avoid these oppressions, as well, as especially to those who have fallen into them.
So the question is, who or what is at the root of this social situation, and please don't tell me that the statistics lie.
