Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I'm still not ready to talk about Black history. I still want to talk about white US history.
Q: Why do Black people see racism in everything?
A: A few years ago, European tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky asked some very good questions in good faith. He asked why San Francisco and Madrid were different in so many confusing and awful ways. I answered each of his questions. Please verify each and every answer with a skeptic's keen eye.
Here we go...
Q: Why are homeless people so rare in Madrid and so common in San Francisco when here GDP per capita is half?
A: Racism.
Of the homeless folk in the USA, 45% have mental health challenges and 40% are Black, even though only 13% of the pop is Black. In SF, less than 5% of the population is Black, but 37% of the homeless population is Black.
In the 80s, when Reagan killed mental health facility funding and Black homelessness exploded, no one cared. 🤷🏿♂️
But... most homeless US folk are still white? Facts. Unaffordable housing combined with a lack of social programs or safety net lead to homelessness in the US in general. Because in the US, most white people will oppose social safety nets if they believe that Black people will benefit, or if you remind them of "changing demographics." Because racism.
https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sf/soy046/5002999
Convince a racist white US citizen that "Black people receive welfare!" and they'll oppose their own benefits🙃
Q: Why is the murder rate 500% higher in California than Spain?
A: Racism.
Despite (and because of) racist over-policing, law enforcement in the USA is fantastically inept at catching killers that murder Black folk. Including Black folk.
Black citizens (wisely) don't call the cops. So murderers rack up astronomical body counts.
Less than 1 in 2 US murders is solved. That clearance rate is *lowest* in neighborhoods where cops brutalize innocent Black folk the most.🙂🙃
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/01/12/as-murders-spiked-police-solved-about-half-in-2020
But is this correlation or causation? It seems almost like Black folk are suggesting that police activity *causes* more murders to happen?
We can test this (and we have!) by seeing what happens if you go into a neighborhood with a lot of murders, and get police to stop brutalizing innocent Black people, and focus only on stopping murders.
Result: You can end a murder wave in a city by getting cops to focus on murders instead of being evil.
Operation Ceasefire works.
https://www.npr.org/2011/11/01/141803766/interrupting-violence-with-the-message-dont-shoot
Q: Why is health care free even for tourists in Spain paid for by Spanish taxpayers as a human right and so incredibly expensive and cumbersome in California? Our son fell in the bathtub and we had a $12k bill for a few stitches at Stanford ER.
A: Racism.
People hate Obama's Blackness so much, that their opinion of whether universal healthcare is good or bad depends on if you call it Obamacare.
Racist folk with terminal diseases and no insurance, will vote against free healthcare. Cuz Obama.
@mekkaokereke
To be fair, he *is* responsible for every bad thing that's ever happened in the history of the world. So, you know...
