The reason for their disadvantage, is not because of current systems of oppression, but from the fact that many of them, due to past ills (or maybe not), exist in a cycle of poverty that is hard to get out of regardless of race.

You see, this is where you lose the thread.

It would make sense, to a certain extent, to say poor decision making led to this moment in history. Except, you know, history. And the systems of oppression need not be employed now to have had tremendous ripple effects that have led to decades upon decades of oppression that aren't even apparent or relevant today as policy objectives, but have had a lasting impact.

Let's start with one, just one, example: geography.

No one thinks about geography. It is so boring as to win a Nobel peace prize just for getting eight graders out of having to trouble themselves with the concept. I get it.

But we had a GREAT IDEA in the forties. Tenements. We didn't call them that. But that was the idea. People were living in these decrepit three story, five story walk-ups with shared bathrooms and every other thing. Go read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" for more details. They were gross, these communities were "ethnic" (aka, black and other less-desirables) and we could do something about it with architecture. They planned these beautiful communities. Store fronts and jobs on the street level, with housing above and green spaces for children to play. It was awesome. It looks a lot like a many new condominium designs, truth be told.

But gentrification and white flight were not in anyone's rear view mirror yet. No one knew. It wasn't like someone came and said, "Let's segregate the black folk" (no, wait, that did happen, just not in all instances of this movement where they actually tried to attract the black folk...that gets complicated, let's leave it for the time being). But siding with the most pleasant minded and forward thinking and least racist, the idea was to build planned communities of prosper. They were, if we're not taking a radical view, intended to be net positives.

Spoiler alert: they weren't.

We had white flight. Because every white group not considered "white" when they immigrated (the irish, the german, the italians, the norwegian, the pick-another-country-of-your-choosing) made themselves white by not being black. Black you can see, Irish you can hide. Lose the accent, understand the metrics and the culture, welcome to America.

What was supposed to happen was ethnic communities of self-starters who took opportunity through architecture and raised themselves up.

What actually happened was racially segregated communities with few to no job opportunities, huge amounts of poverty and violence, and seeds of what would become the Cabrini-Green in their wake. Because poverty breeds poverty. We've made that set in stone with school funding, right? I mean, no one can pay their property tax and/or property tax costs basically nothing, so no one gets a better job. No one goes to a good school so no one can get a better job. No one wants to invest in infrastructure like schools or roads or supermarkets or manufacturing because that's the bad side of town. So the sink hole just gets deeper. And deeper. And deeper.

And drugs. And all the other bullshit. But remember: we're talking about one issue. We could talk about how crack was the wrecking ball. We could talk about a billion other things that compounded this problem. But we aren't. We're keeping it simple. We're talking about the most boring thing: geography.

So...now we have a bigger problem. It's one thing to be poor. It is another entirely to have your entire family, community, and resource center to be poor. It is another thing to have no mentors who haven't been poor. To have no jobs. To see no ladder. To have no way out. I grew up poor. Like "at the poverty line" poor. But I had people in my life who weren't. Which means I had mentors. Which means I had a ladder. But if all the people you know, all the people you've ever met, are contained within the geographical boundary you were raised in that caused this problem in the first place? No ladder.

I mean...can't you take it from there? Do we need to go through it? Can't you extrapolate?

The only problem we run into in terms of making sense of the situation is this: It was about race; it wasn't about race. Which means no one said "Hey, I have an idea, let's move all the poor black folks into these houses". And even if they DID say that (and they did, for the record) the people who said it might not have meant "Let's keep black people poor and disenfranchised for all of time". And some of them probably meant that too, but fuck them. If we give EVERYONE the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that everyone had the best of intentions, the best you come away with is a failure to recognize how shitty things got, how people at the time were complicit if not aggressively backing the system that brought it to that point, and they did NOTHING to fix it. And we refuse to own up to it.

Here's how you know: every other immigrant group has flourished. I am from the "need not apply" Irish. Some of you are German and Dutch and Italian and who gives a damn. Every single immigrant group in this country, including Latinos and Asians, and we've all be whitewashed. Made white. The Irish, my own "proud" heritage did it by playing black face in minstrel shows. Aren't WE proud? It if was fair, if it was equal, if it wasn't about color the black population of this country would FLOURISH. They've been here about 150 years longer than I have, genetics considered. Everyone else got brought into the fold, welcomed in the up-from-the-bottom trajectory we like to claim is color-blind. And we all drink and philander and use drugs and fuck up with pretty equal measures, so every single sociological study suggests with some minor margins of error.

So...why them?

Because it didn't stop with the Civil War. Or Brown v. Board. Or the Civil Rights Act. Or the Tenement housing. Or the laws on crack versus powder cocaine. Or the laws about marijuana wholesale. Or the eugenics. Or the sterilization. Or the medical testing. Or the substandard pay, the police abuse, the ability to use "tough on crime" to win an election, your fears, your prejudices or the tacit head nod to "diversity" that allows you to overlook the real and vital facts of your own history.

You wish it was different, because you hate what I am telling you. Me too. I hate it. I hate it with every fiber of my being. I hate it and I try to say it, but I fail. And I'm not a person of color. I'm just an Irish girl not treated like she's black. BUT IF YOU THINK for just one second, just one instance, that it was someone's failing that led us here...let's try to get it right. If you are not a person of color? It was your failing, not directly, but through history. Know that, the very fucking least.