Systematic Racism exists, just not in the way you think it does...

EDIT: I want all the shitty takes on Systematic Racism to end. So this is an attempt to provide a holistic view so people stop questioning the validity of "systematic racism" or argue for it in shallow logic using wrong metrics.

It concerns me that when people think about Systematic Racism, they look at it from a very narrow view and end up inadvertently cherry-picking evidence - to either "prove" or "disprove" its existence.

The brutal truth is everyone has it wrong about Systematic Racism. It does exist, but not in the way you think it does (or doesn't). Systematic racism is any sort of practice that ends up disadvantaging a certain race either under the eyes of the law (ex. Jim Crow laws) or under any public/private programs.

Funny thing is, systematic racism doesn't distinguish between systems deliberately put into place to discriminate and systems that inadvertently do so. So, if you look closer, you'd be surprised to find what's systematic racism. I'll explain why both right-wing and left-wing views on Systematic Racism are too narrow and hence wrong.

- What the right-wing got wrong about systematic racism:

Many right wing people seem to think it's just about racism allowed under the eyes of the law. So they think "Systematic racism? Didn't we get rid of Segregation and Jim Crow laws? We do have equality of rights under our legal system after all...". Yet, they forget to look closer into the causes of current-day racial disadvantages that clearly exist - ie)"soft-segregation" where many African Americans live in their own neighborhoods and haven't been able to rise above poverty. Instead, they take an easier path by wrongly assuming that attributes displayed by certain members of the disadvantaged communities as the cause of their plight. You know the whole "they're lazy and financially irresponsible" shtick. The fact is, those attributes were caused by the plight itself! Too many people get their causes and effects mixed up.

- What the left-wing got wrong about systematic racism:

Ironically, many left-wingers seem to be under the illusion that clearly harmful programs would help.

Public housing programs pretty much caused "Segregation 2.0". There's significant evidence that Affirmative Action caused net harm to minorities. Any sort of "minority quota" that companies use has the same impacts as AA, but worse since company productivity is sub-optimal and some people's careers are ruined/stagnated. The list goes on....

Essentially, any sort of program that forces equality of outcome or have paternalistic rationale behind almost always end up backfiring. (And Yes, I'm calling Affirmative Action part of systematic racism because the results suggest it disadvantaged Black and Hispanic people).

• What really happened:

If one looks into the causes of modern-day racial disadvantages, it's easy to see that the main causes are very surprising. Let's take a crack at it.

Public housing programs "forced" African-American families, who were poor as the result of Segregation (both direct and indirect), to live together while decreasing their living standards - through various regulations that prevented publicly/privately provided utilities and amenities from being available, not funding education enough, etc... This essentially prevented any sort of economic growth and propagated disadvantageous traits/ideas in these communities (like "schooling is for nerds", or being "financially irresponsible" and what not). Why do you think ghettos exist? Harlem and Compton ehem... Quite obviously, crime rates sky-rocketed.

To make things worse, there were series of government action that allowed increased police presence in these neighborhoods to fight crime. Let's not forget all the ungodly powers that police unions gained overtime, which in turn caused police brutality. Let's not forget privatization of prisons WITHOUT the proper regulation (privatization by itself wasn't a bad choice but Reagan forgot that prisons are part of the law enforcement system that requires good amount of government action even by libertarian standards) that incentivized the police to catch as many criminals as possible rather than keeping things in order. Thanks to these huge mess-ups, now we have higher conviction rates for African-Americans than any other racial groups. Police brutality isn't inherently racist, but other systematic failures made it look racist.

Unfortunately, much of the left-wing people are focused on treating the symptoms rather than curing the disease itself. Even worse, their ideas of treating the symptoms will actually make things worse (and they have). I'm talking about things like Affirmative Action here. It's like treating someone with a mauled arm with tons of opioids: You make a person dependent on opioids while actually worsening the pain. It's clearly much better to remove the source of the pain... (FYI, opioids are dumbass programs like AA and public housing, pain is racism, mauled arm is the root cause of racism). But the right-wing is no better: They refuse to see or are just blind of the root causes of Systematic Racism that still exists. Haste "Solutions" vs. Negligence - neither options look good...

TL;DR: Everyone has it wrong about Systematic Racism. It includes not only Jim Crow type laws but also Affirmative Action and Public Housing programs. Surprisingly, a lot of modern-day systematic racism was caused by programs meant to get rid of racial disadvantage and programs meant to handle the back-firings of the previously mentioned programs. Tyranny of the status quo indeed. If you want to fight Systematic Racism, get your facts right, identify the root causes. Don;t just treat the symptoms and pretend everything's okay.