Black Americans make-up a little over 12% of the population but represent 33% of those in federal and state prisons. It is ludicrous to believe that there is a giant racist conspiracy on the part of lawyers, judges, mixed-race juries, police officers and liberal and conservative politicians to lock-up innocent African-Americans. There are of course real cases of racism and police brutality but they are not systemic. Where these cases exist they are not based upon our laws or official policies. They exist in spite of our laws and official policies. They are the product of malicious individuals making bad choices or the inept training of personnel. These are real problems and every reasonable measure should be taken to eliminate them.
There are of course real examples of "systemic racism", such as Nazi Germany's "Nuremberg Laws", "Jim Crow Laws" of the old south, or the laws of "Apartheid" that existed in South Africa. There are now no racist laws in the United States of America. They were stripped away over a period of years after the American Civil War. The major changes made by the 13th, 14th, 15th, amendments to the Constitution, "Brown v. The Board of Education" and the other Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, make it impossible to fairly characterize American society as "Systemically racist".
The truth is that the major thrust of American public policy, public sentiment, public education and the efforts of good citizens and business leaders since the 1960s has been in favor of lifting lower-socio-economic African-Americans out of poverty and breaking the cycle of crime and despair. If one takes an objective look at the national laws passed since the 1960s, the general direction has been in favor of benefiting African-Americans. Often the policies were wrong-headed and counter-productive but they were at least well-intentioned. America has spent since the 1960s trillions of tax payer dollars to ameliorate the problems of the "under Class", For all intents and purposes "Reparations" have already been paid.
Equal to their myth of America as "systemically racist"is their myth that the majority of Americans are "white supremacists". They choose bits and pieces of America's worse history to support their general indictment of our present day society. Any true comparison of American history with any other civilization past or present should result in a sense of awe and wonder at what America has achieved. The primary cause of America's current social pathology, is the huge increase in single-parent families. This is a cultural problem that cannot be solved by government. Infact liberal government policies have helped to create it. Caring, loving, parents cannot be dispensed at "Planned Parenthood". If such a thing as "systemic racism" does exist in America it could only be the reverse-racist thinking that dishonestly paints all white- Americans with the broad brush of collective guilt for historical sins which they had no part in.
William D. Howard is a freelance writer who had a long career as an educator. He holds degrees in philosophy and history and has traveled widely in over 40 countries. His essays have been published in American Thinker, LifeSiteNews, Intellectual Conservative and other publications.
