>> same time we have made significant progress on racial issues?
Have we? the current riots / protest seem to indicate not.
>Further much of that progress was driven by government mandate: The Civil Rights acts, anti-discrimination laws for employment, affirmative action, etc.
There is / was a double edge sword to many of those issues. For example more than 50% of the civil rights act was rolling back and repealing racist government laws and regulations. People seem to have this perception that the population was racist and the government saved the day when in reality the government was racist and then rolled back some (not all) of their racist policies.
So the 60's you have the Civil Rights acts, then what do we see in the 70's and 80's? The War on Drugs, and "Tough on Crime" laws that were disproportionately enforced and impacted poor and minority communities. This trend continues to today with continues sentencing disparity, mandatory minimums, and various other things that at a minimum are Class based enforcement if not outright racist enforcement of law
So I can easily reconcile my position that government is the problem because that is a factually accurate analysis of the history of law in this nation
Have we? the current riots / protest seem to indicate not.
>Further much of that progress was driven by government mandate: The Civil Rights acts, anti-discrimination laws for employment, affirmative action, etc.
There is / was a double edge sword to many of those issues. For example more than 50% of the civil rights act was rolling back and repealing racist government laws and regulations. People seem to have this perception that the population was racist and the government saved the day when in reality the government was racist and then rolled back some (not all) of their racist policies.
So the 60's you have the Civil Rights acts, then what do we see in the 70's and 80's? The War on Drugs, and "Tough on Crime" laws that were disproportionately enforced and impacted poor and minority communities. This trend continues to today with continues sentencing disparity, mandatory minimums, and various other things that at a minimum are Class based enforcement if not outright racist enforcement of law
So I can easily reconcile my position that government is the problem because that is a factually accurate analysis of the history of law in this nation