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Life Isn't Fair - Wrapup

It's easy to look around and see what you haven't got, how you've been slighted. There will always be somebody better off than you. And if you think you have been mistreated, just take a look at the abuse the most powerful men in the world take, the Presidents of the United States. How would you like to be in their shoes? OK, we get it - we want just the good stuff, not the bad stuff. But it's a package deal - you don't get to pick-and-choose.

Liberal Left Activists have worked for decades to identify a long list of Systemically Racist consequences for Blacks, including [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [16]:

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  1. Racial Injustice is woven into the very fabric of our society, from our economy to our healthcare system to our education system
  2. Police brutality
  3. Racial profiling
  4. Racial disparities
  5. Colonialism
  6. Slavery
  7. Jim Crow
  8. Structural past inequalities
  9. Racial songs
  10. Racial epithets
  11. White supremacy rallys
  12. Lower housing equity
  13. Lower wealth
  14. 40% of the homeless population
  15. Gentrification of our cities
  16. Black mothers are far more likely to die in childbirth
  17. Mass incarceration
  18. Environmental racism
  19. Flint water crisis (poisoned water)
  20. War on drugs
  21. Polluted air
  22. Particle pollution
  23. Child asthma
  24. Residential segregation
  25. Economic disenfranchisement
  26. Unequal access to housing
  27. Segregation
  28. Limited political power
  29. All walks of life
  30. Marginalized groups face particular hardships
  31. Black LGBTQ people must contend with homophobia, transphobis, misogyny, and anti-queer discrimination and violence
  32. The wider LGBTQ community reinscribes white privilege
  33. Black queer people may face homophobia, bias, bullying, or violence within Black communities
  34. Queer Black and Latino people are at risk for more suicide attempts
  35. Depression and anxiety among queer Black youth is intensified by racial disparities
  36. Black communities are marginalized
  37. Black communities are oppressed
  38. Discrimination
  39. Housing inequities
  40. Healthcare inequities
  41. Marginal and oppressed subjects
  42. Connection between sports and past racial subjugation, namely slavery
  43. Sports play an important role in the maintenance of white privilege and wealth
  44. Sports can reproduce unequal power relations
  45. Systemic racism is pernicious at home, in society, and at work
  46. Black applicants are less likely to get interviews for jobs
  47. Applicants with ethnically sounding names are less likely to be called for interviews
  48. Black workers face microaggressions, stereotyping, discrimination, and/or hostile work enironments
  49. Black workers face retribution if they speak up or file complaints
  50. Racial power imbalances place Black workers at financial, social and emotional disadvantages
  51. Black workers earn 38% of what their white counterparts make
  52. Black women earn 34% of what their white counterparts make
  53. Black women lack the most power and wealth due to their genderized and racilized position
  54. Black people face added emotional, mental and physical labor in order to more easily navigate their work environments
  55. Black people put in extra or invisible labor, but get compensated less for their work
  56. Institutional racism
  57. Individual racism
  58. Prejudice
  59. Racism
  60. Blacks are constantly seeing Black bodies on social media and the 24-hour news cycle
  61. The ubiquity of racism on our phones and televisions can be traumatic and triggering
  62. Racism has psychological consequences including depression, anxiety, and other debilitating conditions
  63. Racism leads to post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders
  64. Racism stress contributes to cardiovascular disease
  65. Black mental health issues are 20% higher due to racism stress
  66. Black mental health care is less accessible, biased, and misdiagnoses
  67. Black people are overdiagnosed with schizophrenia
  68. Black people with mental illnesses are at particular risk when it comes to policing
  69. There is a history of Black lives not mattering
  70. The median white family has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family
  71. Racism causes voter suppression, voter intimidation, unfair voter ID and gerrymandering
  72. One in 13 Black people are unable to vote because of U.S. laws
  73. Counties with higher numbers of Black people have fewer polling sites and poll workers
  74. Black people wait longer in lines to vote
  75. Black people are suppressed when their voter registrations do not match official state documents
  76. Public school systems remain separate and unequal
  77. Black students attend schools that receive less funding and provide a lower quality of education
  78. Funding is directly tied to race, not poverty
  79. Black students have less exposure to advanced classes and have lower high school completion rates
  80. Black students attend schools where just over half of the teachers meed certification and licenture requirements
  81. Blackness is criminalized
  82. Black students ae expelled three times more than white students
  83. Black people live in neighborhoods where access to healthcare is limited and quality is lower
  84. COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on Black people
  85. Black people are infected three times more that white people
  86. Chronic stress is brought on by racial discrimination, or place-based risk
  87. COVID-19 is not an equal opportunity killer
  88. The criminal justice system generates, supports, and sustains racial inequalities
  89. Mass incarceration is a racial caste system
  90. Black people are disproportionately affected by disparities in policing, sentencing decisions, selective law enforcement, and police brutality
  91. Black adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated than whites
  92. Blacks are three times more likely to be executed under the death penalty
  93. Black people are almost four times more likely to be arrested for having marijuana than white people
  94. The criminal justice system assumes Black guilt, disproportionately punishes, and sets up Black communities to feed into the prison system
  95. Black people are racialized, stereotyped, and victimized in public spaces
  96. Black people are discriminated against or racially profiled when they shop, work, exercise, run errands, get an education, or pursue recreational interests
  97. Black people questioned, harassed, and profiled when engaging in everyday innocuous activities
  98. Black people are often viewed as intruders, trespassers, or criminals
  99. Black people are viewed suspiciously at banks
  100. Financial institutions red-line, refuse services, deny loans, and raise interest rates for Blacks
  101. Stereotypes of Black people as lawbreakers position Black customers as threatening when they enter banks
  102. Racial biases in banking culture are deeply embedded, even when the bank employees themselves are Black
  103. One’s level of education, occupation, or personal wealth provides little protection when banking while Black
  104. Black people feel unwelcome, insulted, treated differently, or feared in restaurants and stores
  105. 59% of Blacks are treated less fairly than white Americans in shopping malls and other stores
  106. Racial profiling makes shopping trips stressful and unpleasant for Black people
  107. Black crewmembers experience extra, invisible work that being a Black person in the airline industry entails
  108. The airline industry has developed as a "white space" regarding who belongs and doesn’t belong in the cockpit
  109. Black people are treated like second-class citizens
  110. Blacks are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites
  111. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
  112. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
  113. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
  114. I can be reasonably sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
  115. I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well assured that I will not be followed or harassed by store detectives.
  116. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely and positively represented.
  117. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
  118. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
  119. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
  120. I can be fairly sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.
  121. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another woman's voice in a group in which she is the only member of her race.
  122. I can go into a book shop and count on finding the writing of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.
  123. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance that I am financially reliable.
  124. I could arrange to protect our young children most of the time from people who might not like them.
  125. I did not have to educate our children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.
  126. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
  127. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.
  128. I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
  129. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
  130. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
  131. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
  132. I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
  133. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
  134. I can be reasonably sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge," I will be facing a person of my race.
  135. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
  136. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
  137. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, un­heard, held at a distance, or feared.
  138. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
  139. I can be fairly sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.
  140. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
  141. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.
  142. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.
  143. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
  144. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
  145. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
  146. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
  147. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.
  148. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative, or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
  149. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
  150. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
  151. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
  152. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.
  153. If I have low credibility as a leader, I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
  154. I can easily find academic courses and institutions that give attention only to people of my race.
  155. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.
  156. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.
  157. Missing White Woman Syndrome
  158. Betsy Ross Flag
  159. Confederate Flag
  160. Confederate monuments and memorials
  161. Confederate military base names
  162. Halloween parade marginalizes students of color
  163. Infrastructure is racist
  164. Roads are purposely built to divide Black and White sections of town
  165. Bridges are built with low clearances to prevent Black people from getting to the beaches
  166. Railroads are purposely built through Black neighborhoods
  167. Heavy trucks are purposely routed through Black neighborhoods
  168. Pollution from rail and heavy truck traffic cause pollution, which causes Black children to have the highest asthma rates
  169. Systemic Racism causes obesity in the Black community

That's quite a list of how horrible it is for a Black person to live in America. The intent is to emphasize that if you are Black your situation is hopeless, you are a Victim. It makes you wonder why Black people are flocking here from other nations, just become Racial Victims.

Unless the narrative isn't true.

In reality, there are many groups that could obsess over being Victims including:

So we should easily agree, life isn't fair. Yes, to any of us.

But looking around for what you haven't got isn't a path to success for anybody. In fact, it is SUCH an obstacle to success that one of the Bible's ten commandments addresses it:

"Thou Shall Not Covet"

Exodus 20:17

The Hebrew word translated "covet" is chamad (חמד) which is translated into English as "covet", "lust", and "strong desire". The Bible contains numerous warnings and examples of negative consequences for lusting or coveting. Instead, the Bible emphasizes hard work, accountability, truthfulness, and helping others as the means of achievement and success in your life.

Don't Take The Bait

References
  1. RACIAL INJUSTICE IN AMERICA Ben Crump Law
  2. The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons The Sentencing Project
  3. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies The National SEED Project
  4. How 'missing White woman syndrome' has real life implications CNN
  5. Nike Pulls Shoes Featuring Betsy Ross Flag Over Concerns About Racist Symbolism npr
  6. Governor signs historic bill to remove Confederate symbol from Mississippi flag The Guardian
  7. Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials Wikipedia
  8. Pentagon Asks Public for Suggestions on Renaming Bases That Honor Confederate Soldiers Military.com
  9. Seattle elementary school cancels its annual Pumpkin Parade because it 'marginalizes students of color who don't celebrate Halloween' Daily Mail
  10. Life Expectancy of the World Population Worldometer
  11. Lefty Disadvantages Anything Left-Handed
  12. 17 Not-So-Tiny Problems Only Short People Understand Cosmopolitan
  13. Science says: 8 ways shorter men are at a disadvantage Rappler
  14. What are the disadvantages of a short height? Quora
  15. Is being short a disadvantage in general? Why or why not? Quora
  16. Racism and obesity are inextricably linked, says a Harvard doctor – and here’s how she thinks that can change BOSTON GLOBE MEDIA PARTNERS
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