Indeed, there is great strategy involved in allowing a select number of Blacks to advance. Specifically, in positioning a number of Blacks in top positions, it helps to deflect accusations of racism in America. Thus, people become focused on what America looks like rather than what it does. Accordingly, the principle of fighting structural discrimination is eclipsed by the desire to showcase difference through symbolic gestures. Therefore, the presence of Blacks in certain position is little more than “window dressing” and any perceived change is simply cosmetic. Furthermore, the system could never remedy the Black condition because the system IS the problem.
The same is true with the Presidency of the United States. Although a Black man occupies the office of President of the United States, this achievement must not be interpreted as a structural change in the system. You see, racism is not simply about whites as obvious villains and Blacks as obvious victims. To be sure, racism is a system of oppression that discriminates against people on the basis of their race. But racism is not static; it has a shifting nature so that it can give something on the one hand, and takes away something greater on the other hand, yet, at the same time, gives the illusion that it is receding. That is the genius of the system.
AMERICAN PARADOX
(A few are IN The Big House and the multitudes are IN The Prison)
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