>>Racism is wrong, but there's
>>a point where you can't
>>convince people not to be
>>racist anymore; you just have
>>to figure out a way
>>to beat those racist beliefs.
>
>That way is called education, and
>in this lovely capitalist system,
>it also means decidely progressive
>economic empowerment for those considered
>to be "at the bottom."

I agree with you partially. Progressive economic empowerment is a good idea for the victims of racial discrimination. It's a lot harder to discriminate against somebody when they're the ones giving you a job. As far as education goes, I think the problem is racism is a deeply entrenched belief for a lot of people. You can teach kids the hating people because of race is wrong in school, but if they go home and get the opposite lesson from their parents (not to mention from TV and virtually every other kind of media) it's not going to stick. In my opinion, the only way to really "cure" racist beliefs is through individual life experiences -- the classic "he saved my life so I quit the Klan" kind of stories. Since those are virtually impossible to engineer on a large scale societal level, I think the best bet is to say "Americans are racist. How are we going to change our policies and way of life so that people aren't victimized by that racism?"


"Shake the hand that shook the world"
-- Dropkick Murphys