Looking at the experience of black Britons through an American lens

In my opinion, this hypersensitivity was turned into a weapon to shame people who have no ill-will. Compounded with Twitter bandwagoning, it’s downright dangerous, and now people are self-censoring anything to avoid censure

As I'm an American, feel free to reject my comment out of hand.

That said, yes there's plenty of racism in the US.

Sure, it's fun to sneer at Americans and feel superior. Knock yourself out.

However, you seem ignorant of reality and of history.

In many cases the issue isn't that most Americans are actively thinking about how inferior the minorities are.

It's much more about the racist structures built into American society over the past 400 years. We've been slowly (and much too slowly, to my mind) coming to grips with these issues.

In doing so, we've shed an enormous amount of blood. Before our civil war, ~13% of our population was enslaved[0].

During that war, 2% of the population were soldiers killed on the battlefield. And the number of civilians killed is unknown, but likely substantial. Imagine if wherever you live, 3% of the population were to be killed, vast swaths of your cities, towns, villages, farms and ports destroyed[2].

After the war, once the armies of the "victorious" side left the American south, tens of thousands of former slaves were, murdered, beaten, tortured or imprisoned.

Discriminatory laws were enacted and enforced[1] throughout the former Confederacy[5], and was continued in the West and Southwest[3][4], not just against the former slaves, but against those of Mexican, Native American and Asian descent as well.

Even in the North (with most of the population and nearly half the area) where slavery was illegal before the war, discriminatory practices against free blacks as well as former slaves was common.

But don't forget that Catholics (Irish, Italians, etc.) and Jews were often discriminated against too. Certainly not as harshly as people of color, but that existed, and still exists today.

For decades, legal discrimination persisted. It was more than 80 years after our civil war before we started to dismantle the governmental systems that both implicitly and explicitly discriminated against nearly 15% of our population.

And over that time, all across the country many thousands were killed and abused with impunity.

That change came only because of the bravery and determination of the blacks in the US. We would berate them, beat them and kill them for being 'uppity', but they never stopped demanding their right to be full American citizens.

And thanks to them, things have changed a great deal here in the US. We still have issues of discrimination in housing, employment, over-policing and a raft of other areas.

But even in my lifetime (I'm over 50), I've seen significant positive change. It's not nearly enough, nor is that change coming quickly enough.

But it is happening.

These days, complacency and inertia are the biggest obstacles to positive change. Many people just don't think about it, or if they do, are content with knowing that they don't discriminate.

Many have married/cohabitate with those of a different ethnic background. Many have children who do so. This varies a great deal depending on where (remember, the US is big) people live. In many places, there aren't many people of color.

Diversity tends to be more within and sprawling around urban centers and many descendants of former slaves live in the south as well.

That's not to say there aren't a whole bunch of dyed-in-the-wool racists and white supremacists here in the US. There are.

Not so long ago, the militant racists were roundly criticized and ostracized. So much so that most of them wouldn't express their bigotry unless they knew they were among those who shared their hateful ideas.

Now those folks are emboldened. Their numbers haven't really increased, it's just that they've attached themselves to other reactionaries who prefer the economic unfairness of our society.

The difference these days is that factions of certain political groups want to use bigotry as a political tool.

Yeah, we've got problems here in the US. But you don't repair 250 years of slavery and a 100 years of legalized discrimination overnight. And you don't do it in 70 years either.

This is a bleeding gash on American society that's slowly healing.

I hope that I "will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."[6]

You may recognize those words, but read the whole speech. It's almost as much a demand for economic fairness as it is one for an end to discrimination. Which, given the increased inequality we've been seeing, should give all of us some food for thought.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/13/how-the-south-...

[4] https://www.c-span.org/video/?471923-1/how-south-won-civil-w...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America

[6] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/i-h...

Edit: Fixed link references and subject/verb agreement.