&gt; <i>There&#x27;s substantial evidence for both of these though, which you&#x27;re not going to address.</i><p>You seem very sure about what I will and won&#x27;t address. Why don&#x27;t we find out? What is this evidence?<p>&gt; <i>And minorities were kept down by force of law until at least the 1960s; have the systems put in place to do so been fully dismantled?</i><p>I&#x27;d say yes. The right to vote is firmly protected (as for voter ID laws, I think they&#x27;re very reasonable). Racial-based government policy making is prohibited. This prohibition is enforced except for in cases where the discrimination helps minorities.  Private discrimination is a serious legal issue, sometimes pursued to the point of absurdity.  The current shakedown of the car loan industry over racial discrimination is a good example, and many other cases pursued under the doctrine of &quot;disparate impact&quot;.  We don&#x27;t hose down peaceful protesters anymore either, and even in the 60s that was appalling to people outside of the South.  The contrast between Birmingham in 1963 and Ferguson in 2014 is instructive.<p>The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities, and I think it&#x27;s a terrible policy on many counts, but I don&#x27;t think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression.<p>The welfare state is definitely hurting minorities, but again, I think it&#x27;s just bad policy-making, not intentional subjugation.<p>EDIT: Responding to fnovd here, because Hacker News is throttling me:<p>I happen to think that people should be free to put whatever they want into their bodies.  This philosophical debate is <i>not</i> a racial issue.  So let&#x27;s assume that we decide to ban drugs, like we&#x27;ve banned stealing cars.  If minorities are more likely to steal cars, and more likely to end up in jail because they were stealing cars, or more likely to be poor because their dad was in jail for stealing cars, or more likely to sucked into stealing cars because it&#x27;s an easy source of profit in a poor neighborhood, that doesn&#x27;t make banning stealing cars a racist policy.