I think the author summed up modern racism pretty well on pg 135-136. For the most part, racism seems like something we people are more concerned about catching someone doing so they can act shocked, and immediately attack them and ruin their career. It's not that they care about the racist comments that were made.

The author makes a good point when he talks about racism being everywhere, and nowhere. Even though nowadays people don't seem to be as overtly racist as they used to, it still manifests in other ways, including the ways society operates and laws passed.

As the author points out about "color blindness" in politics can be used to pass objectively racist policies without the consequences of blatantly being racist. A lawmaker can pass a law that disproportionately adversely affects a particular race, but if they claim that the law is "colorblind" or has nothing to do with race, it will be far less controversial. Essentially this concept of "color blindness" is a wall lawmaker can hide behind while passing racist laws, just like the euphemisms they talked about in the documentary we watched.

On page 78, he said we can't would ourselves out of seeing something we've already seen. Pretending we don't see race isn't the opposite of racism, and in some regards may be just as bad. All it does is show that you're not willing to critically look at reality and deal with the problems associated with race. Pretending the problem doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. It will just slowly get worse and worse in the background until eventually, it gets so bad it can't be ignored and is a far worse problem than it was.

This whole "convict leasing" thing is interesting from a historical perspective. It's almost "common knowledge" that slavery ended with the Civil War. Then one finds out the same reprehensible actions continued, just under a different name. It just goes to show that history isn't as cut and dry as one may think. Also, that people have been finding huge loopholes in laws for a long time.

I found his section on page 44 about implicit bias intriguing. To some extent, it makes sense. Whether or not we like to admit it, we all make snap judgments about people based on what they look like, how they dress, and any combination of numerous factors. I don't agree however that this is any justification for any discrimination or discriminatory action. We can learn to get past those initial snap judgements, especially because most of them turn out to be wrong.

I found the section on Strategic Racism (page 46) particularly interesting, especially when you relate it to what's going on nowadays. You can see people like Trump vilifying Mexicans and Muslims basically as a fear tactic to further his political goals. This furthers the racist attitudes and actions against those groups of individuals.

This is one of the greatest, most profound insights Plato has blessed us with. I would be remiss if I were to fail to mention that many wise men before, and since Plato have themselves discovered this great truth. However, I feel this only increases the understanding of how this assertion is a fundamental truth, and one of the utmost importance. This statement should be required knowledge for every individual. On that note, it must be written in large gold letters, and framed, and placed on the desk of every professor and manager on earth, lest it be forgotten.

You can’t perfect a skill by simply having it taught to you, even by the best of teachers. You must practice it for yourself in real situations and see for yourself what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t use your own experiences to build upon what you’ve been taught, you'll never surpass your teacher, and no new knowledge will ever be gained.

Physical things, such as the examples of iron and silver are generally understood by most everyone, so we generally agree upon what they are. However, when we speak about such abstract concepts as justice and goodness, there is little consensus among us, or even within ourselves on what they are. Because of this, it is far more effective for one to make an argument to attempt to change your view on what justice is, or what can be done in the name of justice, or what constitutes goodness than it is for one to argue about what iron or silver are. It is for this reason that there is currently far more debate on whether or not we should have the death penalty than there is on if iron is a metal.

Love it madness. It doesn’t make sense. it causes you to do things you wouldn't normally do. The things you do for love, you don’t do because they rationally make sense, you do them because they feel right. When viewed from the outside from a strictly rational perspective, one might think that person ought to be pitied for he fails to see reason. However love, and the ability to set reason aside to do what feels right may be the greatest gift we have as humans, for love may be the greatest thing one can experience. This love isn't just between a couple; it’s the same love we feel for our families, our friends, our pets, and for some people, God. To live your life strictly rationally and with no regard to love is to rob yourself of the greatest part of being human.

It seems that they believe Plato would have enacted something along the lines of Newtons Flaming Laser Sword to discredit the Christian doctrines as being mere fables rather than being the truth. I find this interesting because the same logic could be used to discredit basically all of the teachings of Plato.

This is another example of the relativity of truth. Just as Plato could have written anything and claimed it as the truth, so could anyone else who documents history. All of what we know about the past is what have been written or told by other people. No doubt at least some of it was embellished, or even completely made up. We only know what they wrote down, so we don’t know if what they wrote was really the truth, but since we have nothing else to go off, we accept it as such.

This is similar to what's going on now with news coming from social media. This news caters to our individual beliefs that we already hold rather than showing us news and opinions that cause us to think critically about those views. When these news articles get written to cater to your views, the “Truth” gets distorted to better align with your ideas. The more this happens, the more your “Truth” diverges from the “Truth” of the other side, thus aiding the process of changing truth from being absolute to relative.

In any profession, the ones who are great are not the ones who blindly follow the book or what was taught to them. The greatest are the ones who “Have the greatest distrust in their art,” or in other words, those who can think critically about what has been taught to them. If they think there may be a better way they try a new way rather than simply sticking with what has always been done.

Humans have an innate desire to try and represent abstract concepts into things we can understand. Things like justice, wisdom, and love cannot be put into words that are universally understood by those who are not already familiar with them. In addition, some things are simply too great and complex for our understanding. From a religious point of view, this would include things like Heaven, which is said to be greater than anything we could ever hope to comprehend. Still, we try to put such great and complex ideas and concepts into terms we can easily comprehend. This not only gives us a false sense of knowledge on the concepts but also takes power away from the concepts themselves.

...from the form, is far truer than an elaborate philosophical analysis” (It got cut off)

Many times the real truth and beauty of something lie in its face value. When you make so many attempts to analyze and scrutinize every single piece of it, you rob it of its life and the value the piece originally held.

Preach

I feel like this illustrates a lot of the appeal of religion. Blindly believing what you're told is usually far easier and more comfortable than critically thinking about some of the things we don't understand or things that are scary for us. For example, in my opinion, believing that when you die you go to heaven is far more comfortable than believing when you die you're just gone.In other words, ignorance is bliss.