Protestors shut down the Bay Bridge during peak commute on MLK Jr. Day

[codinghorror]

@metsuken

And most of the country doesn’t care because your brother was black and so are you. You wouldn’t call that selfish? You would try to apologize for their apathy by saying that this racism thing is just too big of a problem that can’t be solved, so the nation that twiddles its thumbs and allows this to happen would do better to complain about their parking tickets and grandma posting her annoying cat pictures on Facebook?

I am not really following. What are you asking people to do? Quit their jobs and devote their lives to… (x) cause? And how do we decide which cause is most important, again, of the thousands that matter? Maybe that is unrealistic, so how do we decide which 5 causes are most important? And to who? To us? To our family? To our community? To our country? To the world?

Should we donate regularly to (x) where (x) is the most important? If it is important enough, should we donate most of our money to (x) where (x) makes a huge difference? Change our Twitter or Facebook avatar to include an awareness ribbon? Post regularly on social media about (x) issue to raise awareness? Start a blog about (x) to study it further and raise awareness? When you are out and about in the real world, accost random people to educate them about (x)? Actively travel to places where (x) is a problem and work there in volunteer fashion to help mitigate (x)?

I agree there are lots of problems, and like many reasonable people I think racism is abhorrent bullshit. For example. I just don’t think me typing that into a textbox on a web page – or tweeting about it, or posting it on Facebook or whatever – is going to make any difference. That black guy who has to carry around his child’s birth certificate because racism, is not going to wake up tomorrow and find that everyone around him has become enlightened and 100% free of racism because I, Jeff Atwood, decried a tiny part of the bullshit racism he has to deal with on a daily basis here on BBS and on Twitter.

For the record I think the main addressable problem at the moment is the way judges and litigators and courts are far too closely aligned with the police, with giant conflicts of interest, and as a result actual prosecution of police for mistakes or intentional transgressions, even for super egregious stuff, just never happens. We need a hell of a lot more “separation of church and state” here. If you have some ideas on some way I can donate money or vote or otherwise help make that happen, I am all s.