...What? 

Who said anything about punishing white people? Also, racist governmental policy didn't end with slavery...

I like how this is the only form of discrimination mentioned in the video that you actually address, as if many, many more people and their families weren't affected (positively or negatively) by things like the Homestead Act, New Deal programs, sharecropping, redlining, persecution by law enforcement, segregation, general racism, etc. 

As sundin said...what?! Who said anything about punishing white people? How does helping minorities do that? This worldview is so emblematic of the victim complex that fuels so much of right wing politics.

See my response above about "punishment".

How would you see it if somebody took your money for racist reasons, like only helping one particular race? If I were poor and this might have to do with racism of the past, I would not want to receive money for being white. Only for being poor. Because other poor people, who are not white, are equally as deserving of help.

And yet the racial wealth gap in this country remains massive. You don't have to be rich to have been positively or negatively affected by generational wealth disparities. How else do you explain the wealth gap? Culture? Work ethic? Family values?

This is exactly how I explain most of it, yes. Culture, work ethics, family values. Did you know that before the wellfare state many statistics for blacks seemed favourable in comparison to whites? I wrote about that in a comment above. A government cheque clearly does not help the problem. In fact, it seems to have worsened it.

No one here is saying not to help poor people in general. Only one side is objecting to helping specific disadvantaged groups within that population. 

Perhaps this is a misunderstanding then. I certainly don't object to helping minorities. I just object to helping them because of them being a minority, black or whatever. You should get help because of the situation you are in, not because of your skin colour (even if you happen to be in that situation because of your skin colour, which I doubt very much.)

It's been true for pretty much all of American history. Why would that suddenly stop being the case now? 

I think I get the sentiment. In the past people did things wrong in one way. So you want to do things wrong in another to make everything right. I would argue that we should do things right now, because you cannot make good on past wrongs with more wrongs (like discriminating against people on the basis of their race, like lowered standards for colledge admissions (USA killed that thankfully, even though in practice it is still a problem), like hiring just from the minoritiy pool (as Britain did for government jobs the last two decades), etc.).

I even could be wrong about past injustices being insignificant for black peoples wealth in the USA today. (Even though it is almost insignificant for your wealth if one of your grandparents were wealthy.) Perhaps those past injustices are actually significant. But what to do about it? Envourage racist policy? I don't think that is the righ way when so many others also suffered from various injustices. I think you would agree that there are many, many poor people, who are poor because they faced injustices, not because of their own doing. So why concentrate so much on the supposed reason for people being poor and helping just those specific ones for those specific reasons? I would say we should try help everybody irrespective of their skin colour.

(Even though you could argue that the reason for the black plight in the USA is important for helping them effectively. Unemployment was low. Family cohesion was high. Violent crime was low. And then the wellfare state came in. And after I don't know how many billions, nothing is better. Quite to the contrary.)

"we can't expect meritocracy to bloom out of society that had its thumb on the scale for hundreds of years" -"had"- past tense. We cannot expect meritocracy to bloom out of society that favours one group over another on the basis of their skin colour.

"we clearly are not there yet" -How do you come to this conclusion? Because of different outcomes? Since that tells you fairly little.

"So, we have a responsibility to set those communities back onto a path where they are able to get out of society what they put in." -This is a too tribal mindset for me. My responsibilities are not to one community over another, only to my fellow citizens. And how do you know that any community does not get out what they put in? Different outcomes again?

"we have a specific responsibility to the people suffering under the unjust actions of the government of the past." -This responsibility only extends to making the government just. Not to overcorrect for poeple with a victim complex.

"the increased proportion of black Americans in the criminal justice system is in itself in no small part a symptom of discrimination and past racism" -I think people are in prison because they commit crimes. And black people are free not to commit them. When Roland Fryer (the ex Harvard prof) talked about his cousins, he said they were in prison on purpose, to get cool tattoos.

And why is it that so many Africans (I read a statistic about Nigerians in particular) and Asians coming to the USA much later, that lived there in extreme poverty for only one generation, are now better off than most black poeple who already lived in that country, this time with a big headstart on their part (with Asians doing even better than white people)? No racist can see the difference between a black person in the country for one generation vs 6 generations.

Ultimately I think we should concentrate on what is effective. The single biggest predictor for success is if you had both your parents at home. So this is what we should promote as a nation - family cohesion, not handouts that have not been effecitve so far in closing any gap. Quite the contrary.

That is EXACTLY what it means and everyone in the working class knows it.  That's because they SEE IT.  For the working class, it's REAL, not something they read on the Huffington Post or see on CNN.  White people who are wealthy and secure aren't giving up a goddamn thing, they're just sacrificing low-income white people instead while they pat themselves on the back and talk about equity like THEY are the ones who deal with the consequences.  That's why you see wealthy people in California talk about helping poor people until it comes around to letting them into their neighborhoods, then they're all about zoning laws.  I was literally told when I applied for a previous position that they were mostly looking to hire minorities to meet the new company-wide goals.  That's reality.  At the very least be honest about it.

That's why the hate for the Left from the working class is only going to increase.  I'm not kidding.  Mark it down.  Remember when I said Trump was going to win several months before the election?  That the working class was fed up with being ignored and dismissed by the Democrats?  But many of the people here said I didn't know what I was talking about?  Yeah, that's because they are out of touch.  I literally heard a Democrat politician say, "we need to fix healthcare because of racial disparity."  NOT to help PEOPLE, but only SOME PEOPLE.  I heard another say the exact same thing about student loans.  Do you really, honestly think other people who are struggling to survive don't catch that they were being left out?  Not that anyone expects either side to go against the insurance lobby, but still.

In fact, there is another warning the Left should take to heart.  Many, many black and Hispanic people are actually very conservative.  I know that surprises a lot of white Democrats but it's true.  They might vote for the Left out of self-interest, which I completely understand, but if the Republicans can get their act regarding racial minorities together even a TINY BIT, then the Democrats will be in real trouble.  The dislike of the Left-wing politicians and celebrities is pretty wide-spread, regardless of race.  We already saw some of the fallout last election.

Really, abandon the ideal of equality if you want, but it absolutely will breed anger and resentment.  Don't be surprised next time.

I agree that politics was dominated by conservative economics from about Reagan to Trump pt. 1. I think we started seeing a bit of a shift during the Obama era, but it wasn't significantly felt in broader economic policy. I think we really started seeing the change in economic philosophy during that first Trump term and it was felt in policy in Biden's term (I think everyone would likely agree that Biden's presidency in 2022, looked a lot different from what a Biden presidency would have looked like in 2010). 

That said, I think reducing everything down to the GINI Index is simplifying things much too far. There is far more nuance to these discussions than one number can demonstrate.

Inherited wealth is mostly spent after one or two generations, not amassed to form a big pile of gold that some people just lucked out of because of their race. Wealth, spending habbits, the economy are all more complicated than Mario Kart.

And very few white people were wealthy to begin with. Just 70, 80 years ago most lived in conditions far worse than any person in the USA today, irrespective of skin colour.

Maybe. But going into details you will find examples that point in many different directions. Because real politics is messy and there are many different people with many different backgrounds, that are affected in different ways by policies.

What the Gini-index demonstrates is, that neither democrats nor republicans are willing to do substantial changes, only superficial ones. That is since Reagan/Bush, because they clearly enabled policies that redistributed wealth towards the rich and increased inequalities. What we can see, that Clinton accepted that change and the democrats after as well. Only superficial changes were enacted. If something would've cut deeper, that would've impacted the Gini-index. Nothing did.

That is because the democrats are also a neoliberal party that is afraid to anger big corporations. Rolling back the changes Reagan did would anger some companies, because what the Gini-index expresses, that wealth floats towards big global corporations (and the people owning them). The democrats will not piss off Google.

To bring it back to racism: minorities are often on the lower side  of the wealth inequality. Sure there are rich non-white people, but the distribution is that the curve for non-whites will trend more towards the lower wealth than for whites. So reforms that fix general inequality expressed by the Gini-index would proportionally help more people in minority population, but not exclusively. So: affordable health care for everyone, proper workers rights for everyone, better free public education, free or affordable and good public transport - all that would help the working class and minorities. But as the Gini-index showed it didn't happen. Even under democrats.

Affordable health care: Dem policy

Expanded worker rights/union rights: Dem policy

Better public education: Dem policy

Expanded public transit: Dem policy

How would you see it if somebody took your money for racist reasons, like only helping one particular race? If I were poor and this might have to do with racism of the past, I would not want to receive money for being white. Only for being poor. Because other poor people, who are not white, are equally as deserving of help.

But they didn't realize any of it. All I see is superficial not effective. That's why it has no effect on the Gini-index.

And we can say the republicans do the same. Affordable health care. A lot of orders on education, which effect we still have to see. Public transport.

But to what effect really? How much of it is show, how much reshuffling of funds, how much supporting helpers of the party? And that goes for democrats too. As the Gini-index shows nothing they did had a real effect on wealth distribution. But meaningful effective policies in these four areas (and more) would lead to an effect. Which means none of it ever was meaningful or effective.

To be clear: the democrats surely produce a lot of paper which can people like you convince that they are doing something. But if over decades the effect is negligable the people that should be the ones feeling these policies, they start to ask questions.