> Otherwise rational people disengage because it's clear you have some kind of axe to grind
There is an axe to grind. I live in a country which has had about three centuries of experience finding every possible way to marginalize black people, and in the last few decades has found every way to dress up the marginalization of black people to preserve plausible deniability and work around laws preventing the direct marginalization of black people (for instance, finding things like income or geography that are correlated with race, and then applying disproportionate policies based on that, so they can convince kind-hearted people like you that they're not discriminating on race when that is totally the intention of the policy). Why should we not have an axe to grind here?
Please stop pretending that this is some sort of dispassionate "politically heated" issue that you can have a friendly watercooler discussion about. Otherwise rational people disengage because it's clear you are making the irrational assumption that both sides are being equally reasonable and participating in equally good faith.
It's not like it's just fine and dandy to discriminate against poor people unless it's being done with the underhanded intent that most of those poor people will also be minorities, is it?
I totally agree that minorities should be upset at these policies, but so should the non-minorities that are being affected by them, too, and hopefully those "kind-hearted people" you talk about, too.
There is an axe to grind. I live in a country which has had about three centuries of experience finding every possible way to marginalize black people, and in the last few decades has found every way to dress up the marginalization of black people to preserve plausible deniability and work around laws preventing the direct marginalization of black people (for instance, finding things like income or geography that are correlated with race, and then applying disproportionate policies based on that, so they can convince kind-hearted people like you that they're not discriminating on race when that is totally the intention of the policy). Why should we not have an axe to grind here?
Please stop pretending that this is some sort of dispassionate "politically heated" issue that you can have a friendly watercooler discussion about. Otherwise rational people disengage because it's clear you are making the irrational assumption that both sides are being equally reasonable and participating in equally good faith.