It would seem that way. Some say systemic racism. Some would even appeal to racism to say black people are somehow innately immoral. The latter is dumb and the former is oversimplifying a complex problem which does include historical racism, but also involves cultural factors and the unintended consequences of public policy. I'd suggest reading Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals for more nuance.
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Ah, I see. I can agree with that. Systemic racism is absolutely part of the problem but even that fairly broad term is too narrow when considering all the factors at play.
I didn't appreciate how all-encompassing a term like 'systemic authoritarianism' could be. I thought you were saying that systemic racism wasn't part of the problem at all, instead of it just being part of the problem.
Discrimination, of which racism is but one variety, is a core component of authoritarianism: divide and conquer. If the authoritarians cannot use race or ethnicity to sew division, they will find something else, such as religion or economic class.
If systemic racism is involved, it's not at the top of the list of current problems and more a root problem behind a lot of old malum prohibitum laws police now enforce indiscriminately.
I think that's part of the problem though, that police are not enforcing these laws indiscriminately. If a study finds that from 100 million traffic stops that black drivers are 20% more likely to be pulled over and their vehicles 1.5 to 2 times more likely to be searched than white drivers (despite statistically being less likely to be transporting contraband) then I'd guess that its more likely than not that police in the US have a racial bias.
But I understand what you're saying... in this example above you're saying that the police shouldn't be pulling over anyone, and that's the larger problem to solve.