Sorting out ways to help

One of the things that came up in yesterday's post is that you can address things from different directions. Let's look at the ways to help I have posted so far:

• Read "The Case For Reparations"
• Pass bill HR40
• Read about diverse characters, written by diverse authors
• End the War on Drugs
• End For-Profit policing
• Make cities friendly to the mentally ill
• De-privatize government contracts, creating more government jobs

Reading "The Case For Reparations" and reading different authors and types of characters is about changing individual hearts and rooting out individual racism. You certainly could see movements in schools, educational associations, and libraries to do it, and you might also see programs at publishing houses to work on that, but it wouldn't be a legal issue.

Passing HR40, ending the War on Drugs, and ending For-Profit policing are very much legislative. They would be geared towards removing institutionalized racism, but their effects could go beyond that as well.

De-privatization is more economic, and it would not be specifically about racism at all, but as it led to more living wage jobs one would hope that the improvements could reach many segments of society.

Making cities that are friendly to the mentally ill is kind of a mix. You wouldn't necessarily need legislation for it, but you would need buy-in from local governments. However, as more people got training, that should change their hearts as well, and it should have a profound effect on policing.

As we go over some of the other things that can be done, it's still going to be like that.

For example, if I write about rape culture and consent (which is totally possible, but I might save it for the next phase), that would appear to be more about sexism than racism. However, we have seen ways in which women of color are more likely to be sexually harassed and assaulted than white women. You might hope that efforts in that direction would be especially helpful to women of color, or you might see that they are less likely to see the benefits.

If part of the way you fight rape culture is affirming that every individual is human and has a right to sovereignty over their body, that may work to affirm the humanity of all people, reducing rapes across the board, or racism could win out and there will still be segments not viewed as fully human.

The point of that is that it's a big thing trying to solve all of these problems - even if you take away the people who don't want them solved. If at times different things are prioritized, that can be okay, as long as it is happening based on actual importance, i.e. people dying is more important than people feeling uncomfortable.

If you can get at root causes, that may be more beneficial. It doesn't mean the symptoms aren't important, and sometimes treating the symptoms triggers a correction at the cause level (which is great, because it can then permeate other symptoms.)

Which is rambling on more and more, I know, but as I write my blog I am taking the things that I have been reading and thinking about and organizing my thoughts around them. Looking at my notes for other ways to help, I have to figure out which order makes sense, and if some seem hopeless, should I still write about them, and hey, that issue seems to require black market solutions.

(Also, I do think about cognition quite a bit, so writing posts like today's makes sense to me.)

I want to try and wrap up this segment next week, and then I will work on something else. Maybe. This is the third post I have started for today.