40% of the country supports a racist President and Attorney General. Many people sit on the sidelines. The white people at that Starbucks spoke out. The black police commissioner sided with the arresting officers. He can no longer be seen as a voice of reason.Blacks protests largely go unnoticed. The white students in Parkland realize this. The black students at Parkland say that the media does not look to them for comment. BlackLivesMatter is labeled a terrorist organization. There are good people among Nazis. It is easy to forget that whites hated Martin Luther King Jr. when he was alive. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are demonized. President Obama’s had to show his birth certificate. The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act and states immediately put up voting restrictions. We are 50 years out from the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and still looking for progress. The resistance to dealing with issues of race is tremendous.

Criminal justice issues have gotten a lot of attention.  I have seen much less attention paid to the economic agenda. 

Thomas Shapiro's book Toxic Inequality does a good job of explaining, using examples of families that were interviewed, how institutional racism manifests in extreme difficulty for blacks and other people of color to build wealth.  The book also recommends specific public policies to break down barriers in ways that benefit people of color disproportionately, but not exclusively, which I view as offering a more promising basis for building a coalition at this time than proposals which focus only on barriers faced by people of color. 

In my experience many of our fellow citizens really do not understand institutional racism.  In my experiences, many whites are heavily disinclined to be willing to talk about race.  They make assumptions and enter with defensive attitudes where they seem to feel as though they can only enter into such discussions unwillingly and emotionally and rhetorically armed to defend their racial innocence by being prepared to assert that do not engage in personally discriminatory or hostile treatment towards black people and other people of color, which may be true or largely true. 

Institutional racism occurs regardless of whether white people are, or experience themselves as, actively hostile or engage in discriminatory behavior towards people of color or not, on an interpersonal level.  All it requires is moral indifference to suffering and injustice, and contentment with the status quo.  If we cannot have cross-"race" discussions about institutional racism I believe it is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible for us to make progress on race relations and combating racial injustice as a society.

I also believe that illegal immigration is highly complicating issue when it comes to relations between whites and people of color in our society, also very difficult for people who see themselves as on opposite sides to discuss productively.  But saying more on that is for another time and thread.         

Starbucks to Shut Stores Nationwide for Racial-Bias Training After Arrests

By Rachel Abrams @ NYTimes.com/Business Day, April 17

Starbucks said on Tuesday it would close more than 8,000 of its stores in the United States on May 29 to conduct racial-bias training for nearly 175,000 employees.

The move comes amid an outcry prompted by the arrests of two African-American men at a Starbucks location in Philadelphia last week.

“I’ve spent the last few days in Philadelphia with my leadership team listening to the community, learning what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it,” Kevin R. Johnson, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement announcing the training [.....]

Can I just say for perspective purposes that this would not happen in my parents' world? You had to call up the National Guard instead.

I admit my confusion. I give some historical references like MLK. You suggest that he had an old style approach. However, you mention Jesse Jackson, an old style guy, as an example of what we need now. The way that I view the situation is that leverage was used in Charleston to bring about change, as small as it was. Corporate leverage was used in Parkland to bring about small change in gun laws. The Urban League uses leverage to get more black executives in boardrooms. In Silicon Valley, blacks are creating organizations that are geared to create the tech professionals who can jobs or start their companies

https://moguldom.com/18890/silicon-valleys-hidden-gem-graduate-education-for-minorities-helps-underrepresented-grad-students-do-stem/

Google has a satellite campus at Howard an HBCU. Leverage is being applied.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/google-opens-satellite-campus-howard-university-students-n737791

Silicon Valley has a reputation for not being welcoming for black people, so other industries are chosen.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3054099/the-reasons-why-there-arent-more-black-engineers-in-silicon-valley

Getting funding to scale up targeted programs will not happen with a Republican administration. People have not been standing still. Progress has been slow but resistance to change has been great. I see leverage being applied.

surprise surprise: