Krellin,
I have deliberately avoided calling you racist. You, in return, never cease to accuse me of such.
Give that a rest, if you please. Your opinion of me has been made crystal clear. I don't need to be reminded.
Now, to your reply:
Yes, alcoholism is something people do. It's also something people *have*. I don't know the details of your own experience, but I do know that alcoholism has been shown to have a number of influencing factors.
(I.e. there is a system underlying why some people are alcoholics and others aren't.)
Some important ones here have to do with genetic inheritance and environment of upbringing.
The reason these are important is because they are not the alcoholic's fault. These are things that make him more at risk of being an alcoholic.
So when this person slips and drinks too much... should all the blame truly rest on his shoulders?
Certainly the most important person in the guy staying sober is himself. Certainly he should have responsibility for himself, and not use alcoholism as an excuse to drink.
But there is something else going on here, which is to say (this is in all caps for emphasis and not for the effect of yelling): THERE IS AN UNDERLYING PATTERN, OR SYSTEM, AT WORK WHICH MAKES AN ALCOHOLIC MORE VULNERABLE TO BINGE DRINKING THAN A NON-ALCOHOLIC.
This is incredibly important to understand because this kind of process is not only at work among alcoholics. What I have described is a medical system, one that takes place in your body, in your genes. There is literally something about your brain and body that makes it different from someone with no alcohol problems.
This simply cannot be ignored.
Now, I want to introduce you to the idea of social systems.
Just as a person can be genetically predisposed to alcoholism, a person can be socially predisposed to a number of things.
If I was raised by two doctors, I am in a sense pre-disposed to be interested in medicine. This is just a simple example, but it's to give you an idea.
There are more sinister social systems at work however. Take our institution of currency (which is millennia old now) and inheritance (also ancient). They are easy to take for granted but we must call them what they are: social constructions.
You probably hate that phrase, "social construction." But you must acknowledge at least what it means - it is something that only exists in the minds of people, collectively. Money, private property, inheritance, these are all perfect examples. If society somehow collapsed these institutions would disappear.
Anyway, take those examples - because of those SOCIAL SYSTEMS, a rich couple will have a rich kid. The rich stay rich.
Not always. As always there are outliers. Some rich people squander their money or give it away. Their descendants are not rich. Just as there are some alcoholics who haven't had a drink in 40 years. Outliers do not disprove the existence of the underlying system though.
And as I said before, you can't expect everyone to be above average.
And so, the rich stay rich. The rich ger richer. This has been the case just about as long as there has been inheritance, I reckon.
What does this social system mean? It means that if you are born to poor parents, you have a disadvantage. Surely you had more of a disadvantage if this was your lot in the Byzantine Empire in 1050 AD than if it was in New York State in 1950. But it is a disadvantage all the same.
So, to use the example of socioeconomic status: Because there is a predictable system, with underlying causes (all of which may not be known - but what matters most is that the system IS there), it does not make sense at all to point at the rags-to-riches guy and then say to the rest of the poor people who were never so lucky:
"You have no excuse for being rich. Look at this guy! He started his own business and worked his ass off. Now he's got enough for him and his family. Why didn't you do that? You must be lazy."
Of course, anyone that can be bothered to spend any time with the poor can see that they are anything but lazy, and anything but stupid. But this is not my central point, it is still an example.
So how about a racial system? A system that said: "black people are less than people. They're property. They exist to carry your baggage, clean your floors, babysit your children, pick your crops, and wait your tables. They aren't fit for anything more. They are naturally suited to hard labor. We're doing them a favor by enslaving them. They come from a backward continent and we've rescued them from the Stone Ages."
This was doctrine for centuries. Gradually the ideology was dismantled because black people consistently proved that it was wrong - Frederick Douglass, Patrice Lumumba, and so on.
But it took a very long time. So yes, slavery was abolished (though it still goes on all over the world in depressing quantities), yes, Africa is independent, yes, black people are said to be equal before the law.
But all this was quite recent. The SOCIAL status of black people is still catching up. They are still treated as inferior, on the whole, than a white person. Denying this is self-defeating. I hope you do not at least deny that.
And so the systems of oppression against black people are still in place, weakened though they have been. So yes African governments are independent. But only just - many of them continue their economic relationship with former colonizers - Ivory Coast sells the world (slave harvested) cocoa, for instance. Just as they did before independence.
And in the US, black people are still, more than white people proportionally, relegated to low-paid jobs, live in poor areas of the countryside and the cities, and, most importantly for our discussion here - EXPERIENCE DISCRIMINATION IN A SOCIAL SETTING.
And as I said before, if you acknowledge that social discrimination against black people exists, you can scarcely ignore that it will influence our economy and government because these, after all, are not run by impartial robots, but by humans. The same humans that exist in our culture in society, the same humans that view black people negatively because of their race.
So I ask again - is it any wonder that a black male is more likely to be thrown in jail on the same charges than his white male counterpart (me, let's say)?
And let me add: I apologize for implying you were drinking the other night. It was insensitive and brash of me, and also not relevant to the discussion.
new maps, new rule
, I'd be "moved" to 100 
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