That's true. Though I suspect for many its not simply not understanding institutional racism, its being unwilling to even attempt to understand it. Which I actually get. About a year ago I had a series of discussions with a white friend/mentor of mine regarding race as he was, by his admission, just beginning to really understand race relations and racial history in America. He leads a small group of men once a week and had a desire to begin talking about these things as his group is all white, 30-60 or so aged guys. What he told me has stuck with me. He said (paraphrasing) 'The issue a lot of us white guys have is that really understanding this race issue means we have to change the entire way we view our world and America and a lot of us just aren't willing to do that'. Of course I summed it up there but that's what I see ALL the time in these types of discussions. People being seemingly willfully ignorant to or utterly dismissive of things that are actually proven, researched truths.
Absolutely. It's beneficial to remember that the foundation of this country was built on the backs of slaves. That's not a political statement, that's concrete fact. Meanwhile, there was ethnic cleansing running rampant in those early days. I bring this up because as much as we'd all like to think that 250 years is a long time, it's really not. Most of us have biases that we'll never truly understand or acknowledge before the day we die.
Ultimately, these issues are socioeconomic as oleboy mentioned in a previous post. If you haven't spent time in government housing communities you should. Or just low-income housing districts. This is a matter of access to education. And please remember that access to education is completely separate from access to a classroom. Education is more so what happens in your household and in your community. Much of the time, priorities for those living in low income housing, are vastly different from those living in medium to high income housing. There are so many negative social factors that people who grew up in middle class neighborhoods can never fully understand.
Just because someone grows up in low income areas, it doesn't preclude them from future success in industry, or coaching for that matter. But what it does is present a much longer series of hurdles that the individual has to overcome. In my life, I've had very few hurdles and unsurprisingly I have good wages and access to healthcare and everything I need in my life. As an example, I work with a very poor minority boy, whose line of hurdles is much much longer than mine ever was, and I honestly doubt that he'll ever find himself in a position as cushy as mine.
It's okay to be white and middle class, and to not feel guilty about it. However, it's unacceptable to sweep these systemic issues under the rug, and to do nothing about it. Like the STRIB, I have no answers, but I do believe that this overall issue is the most pressing thing that we have to deal with as a society, and I think that any conversation about it is not only merited, but necessary.