One of my go-to arguments (in response to the "my Irish/Italian forebears had it rough, too, nonsense) is based on this simple fact: Ten percent of America's population has one percent of its wealth...how did that happen? How did the Irish become White--economically--when Black people never did? Are Black people ten times stupider? Lazier? What happened?

I remember hearing about the "separate but equal" idea when I was a kid, then was dimly aware of the desegregation/busing issues when all of that happened (but it didn't affect "us"). I just read the the history of all of that in Kendi's "How to be an antiracist." Apparently, separate but equal was always seen as more desirable than assimilation (in which Black people do become White, somehow), but it was abandoned out of hopelessness and frustration, as a policy objective...