I have an old and dear white friend with an interracial family. He's always going on about the endemic and systemic racism. I often agree with him but anything I say that explores solutions (other than reparations) is said to be from a privileged POV. I believe this insures that he remains the authority and am happy he can't see my roll my eyes. I think acknowledging the endemic privilege from our skin is an important starting point but, after doing that, we should look at real solutions for moving forward. We can't change, correct, or fully compensate for those sins and white people will go forward being part of a more integrated society. As part of that society we should also be free from shaming or discrimination. I claim the same outrage of discrimination in the issues of gender fairness and truth. It does little good, if any, to shame those who's growth is happening. I now think investments in their neighborhoods and equal inclusion into Biden's job/economic growth should move us forward with no more color shaming. That is a separate issue from the racist Policing and incarcerations which have, and are, so destructive of family cultures. Whites do need to understand those effects and forge a new expectation.

In the US, where non-whites are institutionally disadvantaged, all whites are therefore privileged. Essentially everyone is intrinsically racist, but some resist and actively seek to negate that racism. The rest, not so much or not at all.

Yes all stereotypes are bad, for exactly that reason. "Assume makes an ass of you and me." ( Spelling joke.) Because we should never prejudge people, but find time to explore each person we meet fully and on their own terms.

BUT therein lies the basic problem, because in a connected world with billions of inhabitants, we can not form a personal relationship with every single person we have to interact with, as we could in the days when we evolved our social instincts in groups of hunter gatherers, when we would meet perhaps a hundred people in our entire lives. Therefore we need stereotypes, and since many people do fit their stereotypes they would not seem to be too inaccurate a model of the human world.

The best working answer would therefore seem to be, use just one stereotype, that of a stereotypical human and base that model on yourself. In other words the old, "Do as you would be done by." Until such time as the other person tells you that they have other requirements. I always therefore, as said before on here, assume that everyone is honest in private life, until proved otherwise, because I figure that I am strong enough to take one hit from anyone. And assume that everyone is dishonest in public and business life, because public and business life are impersonal anyway.

Good to see you posting again. You are right, Those are also stereotypes. The problem in the U.S. is that in the America south, the culture is such that white privilege and discriminatory practices against other ethnic groups are still built in. . If a white person grows up in that culture and remains in trhe region, it is difficult to escape "the curse of culture" (see the work of anthropologist Paul Bohannon).

As Bohannon points out out, the norms, practices, and beliefs of the culture in which one grows up shapes and limits those which follow. I would have probably not been able to escape that curse if I had remained in the American south, in which I grew up. But, I did live in Germany, In Illinois, and Kin Kansas, and I did explore and adopt new thoughts and beliefs as a result of college work at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Many American southerners, who have not had he benefits of living in a different culture and of higher education, do not even realize the degree to which ethnocentrism and xenophobia are built into their culture.