As a Latino, I have always felt that America is racist, but to be honest, every member of my family has flourished in America.
My brother married a white woman from Florida and lives very happily in his ethnically diverse community, he’s a real estate agent and gets enough business selling houses, and lives a comfortable life. My mother has lived in Miami for about 30 years and has never had the need to learn English, she is a real estate investor and she too lives a comfortable life. My daughter married a Cuban-American who is in the U.S. Army and they live happily in Hawaii. I live in Canada, I am retired but I made my living as the owner of a dance school and invested in real estate and the stock market.
We are all immigrants. We didn’t have family wealth. We made our fortune from zero. We faced some hardship, but we overcame it. I can say that in one generation, my family closed the wealth gap with whites Americans.
Maybe, America is just racist against black people? It’s hard to see the death of Geoge Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and deny racism in America. Numerous studies have been done by hundreds of social scientists that can point the finger at the racism against African Americans.
When we look at the income gap between black and white families, we see a huge gap. The wealth gap between white and blacks is nearly ten; for each dollar a black family has, a white family has ten. Yes, there is systemic racism, yes, there are fewer opportunities for blacks, yet I want to believe that systemic racism can be overcome and that even for blacks, there are opportunities to gain upward social and economic mobility.
There are two opposing realities in America; yes, there is racism in America, and yes, America is the land of opportunity. Black Americans are victims of systemic racism, but yes, in spite of that systemic racism, black Americans have a small window of opportunity.
“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a legal maxim. It means that if legal redress or equitable relief to an injured party is available, but is not forthcoming in a timely fashion, it is effectively the same as having no remedy at all.
But that’s not 100% true. If we look back at the American justice system of today versus that of 10 or 20 years ago, it’s hard to deny that racism is on the decline and that one day it may disappear completely. Blacks are making inroads at every social and economic level and the trend will continue.