"Another poll reveals that for the first time this century, young white adults have less tolerant attitudes towards black Americans than those over thirty. One reason is that 'the under 30 generation is pathetically ignorant of recent American history". Too young to have experienced or watched the civil rights movement as it happened, these young people have no understanding of the past and present workings of racism in society"- Lies My Teacher Told Me, p. 170.

This paragraph reminds me of how we all should strive to educate ourselves. No one is going to tell us our history. No one is going to explain how we got where we are. We can not understand why we do things today without understanding how we did them yesterday. So often I have to hear from SWP who don't understand the violence that happened before, during, and to a lesser extent after the civil rights movement, and why whites couldn't be on the honor system as far as hiring. They don't understand the hard work that blacks did and continue to do. They don't understand anything, but continue to speak.

I don't understand how I can start to understand that society is not a random collection of individuals, and that we all have agency, not just poor black people, and they can't. I think it has something to do with my reading, so I guess I should encourage that. I don't want my generation to go around being nitwits.

Maybe there is a learning disability in sociology, but quite possibly they don't want to understand how society works. Shitting on scapegoats just feels too good