I've been pondering the problem of structural discrimination again and here are some thoughts I'd like to share.
I think one major obstacle for overcoming discrimination aren't just people who are openly hostile and dismissive towards the marginalized group, but also those who don't want to be..
... to the degree that they deny that the problem applies to them, personally, at all. As a woman, I've repeatedly seen this in men: the angry refusal to discuss structural sexism because "you make it look like we're all sexist and I'm fucking not". I'm sure that many of these persons are absolutely sincere in their desire to be respectful, and the idea that they might still have an implicit bias (read: definitely do!) threatens their own self-concept.
The problem ist that we need privileged persons to engage with the concept of structural discrimination. The refusal to so so, out of fear that what they're doing isn't enough, hinders its abolishment.
From a psychological perspective, angry confrontation towards these people is just going to cause resentment. Yeah, I know we're all tired of explaining, but these people need to have it spelled out to them, they need to be told "Yeah, I know you're doing great, but we need you to go deeper and here's how." That's much more likely to make them allies. Who else ist going to do that?
(That doesn't mean it's a bad idea to shout at morons! It just makes sense to make sure they're morons first. Also, concerning society as a whole, it's far too often necessary to shout in order to be heard. I'm talking about individual conversations.)
I can only talk first-hand about sexism, but I do think that this applies to all kinds of structural discrimination.
(Full disclosure: I'm a white, able-bodied person who professionally works for social justice. I always believed myself to be fairly unbiased... until a few years ago my employer offered an anti-bias training, which made me and all my progessive, white, able-bodied colleagues realize that OH FUCK we weren't. We had to see that to work on it. So I'm speaking from experience.)
Again, I'm not American and don't claim to speak for anyone I don't represent. Just sharing my musings here.
