A White People PSA

The following is a public service announcement for white people:

When speaking of social trends, such crime or mental or physical health, treating individual persons as autonomous social units is a very, very white idea. It's what started "the American dream" in the first place, and has in many ways always stood in the way of racial unity in America. Among educated white people, far too many are unable to see anyone as anything BUT individuals.

The positive of this practice is that it can stem from a desire to avoid generalizations and labeling based on stereotypes.
The negative is that it leaves those who hold with it unable to understand anyone who does not hold this viewpoint.

Other American racial and ethnic groups, in what started perhaps as a backlash against that idea, see any crime committed by or injustice inflicted upon or massive success attained by anyone of their race as an infliction of harm against their entire community.

A black woman who commits a vicious crime tends to be derided not just for making a personal choice to do harm, but for the harm that action causes for the black community as a whole.
Tiger Woods' golf successes were treated as a victory for the entire black community.

A Latino who is killed while in police custody is mourned not as an individual victim of a single tragedy, but as a surrogate for every son, brother, father, uncle, cousin, and husband in the community, and the outrage at his death derives from this surrogate status as well.

Meanwhile, a white man who commits a crime is derided by other whites as a single, isolated incident, whether it is a crime of passion, a crime of malice, or a crime resulting from mental illness (the last of these is an entire racial argument all its own regarding the unequal enforcement of the law and its reporting in news media).

Similarly, a white person having financial success is treated as a success for him/her only, and instead of being treated as a mark of progress for the white community (which isn't really a thing thanks to this very viewpoint) is treated with envy or disdain by other white people because he/she is not them.

If we as a country are ever going to shake off nearly two centuries of American (nearly six of North American) white-first race wars, we who are white and would be more educated and enlightened must recognize this tendency in ourselves and recognize that it is not the default for everyone, and in many cases has been hurtful to ourselves (see my generation's cynicism regarding "the American Dream") and to other racial and ethnic groups seeking true justice and equality in our nation.

It is not racist nor bigoted nor unrealistic to seek understanding, to seek to see people as they see themselves and to better see ourselves through their eyes.
Only through such sharing of sight can we move forward together into building a better and brighter world.