What is the controversy surrounding #takeaknee

[Thumpalumpacus]

Us Brits are weird. I've never heard ONE British person say 'blacks' but I've heard them say 'black people' repeatedly. I say 'black people'. We don't tend to say 'gays' either but we say 'gay people'. If I were to say 'gays' or 'blacks' I'd probably get called a homophobe or racist unless the person I was talking to was themselves homophobic or racist.

So to anyone who thinks that political correctness has gone mad in America: it's pretty mad over here too.

There are folks here who regard "black/blacks/black people" as antiquated and borderline-racist, to be sure. I don't give a damn, though, mainly because they're non-black PC warriors looking for an edge, any edge, from which they might look down upon others.

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It is not just schools. It is economics at it's core, for both poor urban blacks and poor rural whites. If the top 1% and the religious right can use politics to divide the races and classes that keeps everyone divided and desperate, corporations keep their cheap labor, the entire country keeps having to compensate for what the rich don't pay which ends up in another econmic bubble. Race and class are how the GOP divide.

It's not just schools, which is what I said. The issues are interlocking and self-reinforcing. Schools are funded by property taxes, meaning that schools in poor neighborhoods are inadequately funded due to low property values. The children educated in those schools come from poor households, meaning something as simple as steady nourishment is not a given. They also have bleaker job prospects, and tend to wind up with lower-paying jobs, which means that they have a harder time escaping the neighborhood. It also means they're more prone to criminality, and single-parent households, which also tends to result in lower incomes. That means they're more likely to stay where they are, enduring poverty because the father's in the "justice" system and mom has to raise the children alone ... lather, rinse, repeat.