The fact that you use past-tense to describe the persecution of minority groups indicates that we are not mostly in agreement because I think racism still exists today as an ongoing feature of American life.
I didn't mean to suggest that white people should be going to communities of color and asking them for help about what to do about racism. I understand racism to be a white person's problem in that it is through our (mis)behaviors that we cause harm by imposing our views and ways onto others.
It is fallacious to assume that policy changes are the only kinds of actions white people can take to address systemic racism. In fact, I'd say that policy changes are the kinds of actions only a few *privileged* communities of white people can be reasonably expected to make. Challenging racist jokes that dehumanize people of color is one example of something any white person can do to help achieve racial justice. Before we get to challenging racist jokes, however, we need to first agree that racism is still a problem and has by no means been resolved.
No one is denying that white communities have been "enforcing behavioral norms of individual responsibility and productivity"--the point is that the ways (and perhaps mere fact) that we've been enforcing these behavioral norms has been harming Black (and many other) communities for centuries. All white advancements and achievements are carried on the backs of Black people whose enslaved ancestry built this country before becoming incarcerated by those who beat them for trying to escape their plantations.
Communities of color are "rife with criminals and the unemployed" (notice how you made individuals out of these phenomena instead of saying "criminality and unemployment"--thank you for performing the point of my essay) because they have been systematically exploited and denied equitable access to resources. Blaming Black people for these issues is an elaborate form of gaslighting.
It is true that groups cannot progress with high levels of crime and unemployment--but we need to be critical when we think about why this is the case because white communities have been playing an active role in subjugating Black communities for the entire duration of United States history. Black people have never had a fair chance to improve themselves, and when they do then white people typically become scared and/or angry.
Are you familiar with the Tulsa race massacre that occurred in Oklahoma in 1921? Tulsa was an affluent and educated "Black wall street" in Oklahoma during this time that was burned to the ground by white mobs after a Black man accidentally fell onto the arm of a white woman in an elevator. There is a significant amount of information that you could look at to learn more about this but here's the wikipedia page for a start so you know that this is not what could be so conveniently considered Fake News: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
This event is a good example of the violence and destruction (i.e., terrorism) that happens whenever Black people start to collectively advance themselves with the individualistic vigor and productivity you've described.
Whiteness is a vastly underexamined feature of white life that I am excited to continue exploring throughout my work. I appreciate your dialogue with me and believe that these kinds of conversations are more important and impactful for addressing systemic racism than any policy decision or commitment to a cause. It is by talking about the nuances of whiteness that white people can begin to heal the wounds that we refuse to examine because it is through the systematic refusal of these wounds that we (re)produce systems of oppression.
