Andrew,
As for finding references to race offensive, I believe that is a nuanced thing as I've seen come to the forefront in our current times. Just as any physical difference between people can be offensive if used pejoratively (or worse), its also something that is relevant to discuss at times. Especially when this difference is a basis for immoral prejudice. Can it be overdone or can it be used to push less scrupulous agendas? Most certainly.
On the topic of racism in law enforcement and in society more broadly, I don't see the world as you do. In my experience, racism remains a very real thing albeit for the most part its been relegated from the light into the shadows so to speak. I do, however, think it is less than it was when I was much younger. It "feels" like there is a gradual shift at play. For example, when I was a kid it wasn't uncommon to hear white men use the "n" word. My father never did so I always found it troubling, but I heard it fairly often. I honestly can't remember the last time I heard a white man use the "n" word. This is all anecdotal however, and simply my own personal experience.
This is where I turn to what others are saying. Its almost like our old discussions of NDEs. Remember those? :)
The materialist skeptic would attack the personal stories of NDE experiencers out of hand; dismissing them as unreliable, as artifacts of subconscious influence, etc. I have the same difficulty dismissing every black American's stories of police harassment and other forms of racism as simply a delusion thrust upon them by the MSM or whatever controlling group you might wish to put forth.
It seems insulting to the general intelligence of people to a) have an experience (NDE or racial harassment) and b) report it as objectively as possible. Both are highly emotional and noteworthy events.
So, when the volume of black Americans, including many who I've known personally, tell me that these things have happened to them, that they fear for their sons (and daughters, but acutely for their sons), that they are distrustful of law enforcement, I take it at face value. The sample size certainly is significant in my experience, both directly and in the media.
Thus, it feels worthwhile and morally right for us as a society to seek to alleviate this suffering if we can.
Finally, I appreciate you sharing your story and find myself inadequate in attempting to understand or relate. I was blessed with two parents who loved me deeply and raised me safe and generally happy. I can only say that I empathize with you for having had to go through such a tough road. Hopefully that does not come across as empty. (Written medium is tough for me to convey such things.)
I would ask you, in the most respectful way possible, if you have reflected on how your experience may impact your views here? You had an extremely difficult background and found the strength to pull your own self up by the bootstraps (and beyond!). Remarkable for sure. And you being remarkable in this regard, might it make it more difficult for you to relate to those who might not have the same strength of character and have suffered from racism? Again, my apologies if I've made too much of an assumption here. It just struck me as I was reading your story.
I'll close again by thanking you for the dialogue. The George Floyd situation has been particularly poignant for me. Sure, the cynic can see that as me buying into some manipulative MSM narrative. But as I've shared, I've seen enough racism myself to find the stories from black Americans as credible. I think we should act and seek to lessen this pain.
This is Part Two of my answer:
References to Race: There are contexts where this is appropriate. There are many more when it is not. A person's race might be relevant to a doctor presented with a patient who has sickle cell anemia. It is also relevant when describing an attacker to the police, or to the police when trying to find an assailant described to them. Knowing the race allows them to skip over non-matching people, thus narrowing the search field. Race is not relevant to stories about police brutality when statistics on police/suspect interactions shows no indication that race motivates such incidents. Constantly identifying race in these situations, and avoiding the mention of race in counter-examples, encourages the perception that race is a genuine and dominant factor when it is neither. That is what I object to, because it falsifies what is known about those situations. Even worse, it falsifies them in a way that encourages animosity, hatred, and violence.
The "N" word: I have heard it used more times in a single rap song by a black musician than I have heard from any combination of white people I've ever met in real life. I have heard it used by white people in TV shows and movies, but do not recall a single real world use of the word, nor do I use it. This, however, is at at least partly because I don't like any kind of swearing, but also because I see no reason to use slurs when perfectly acceptable inoffensive alternates are available. The frequency of usage found in the media make it seem that this slur is more common than it is, at least in my experience. The "F-word", by the way, is so common these days that it is almost impossible to avoid. Not only is it regularly heard on TV, I've seen it on book covers. I'm so offended by it that I ignore every book near those F-word books, thus reducing to zero the possibility I will buy anything within about a twenty book proximity of the offending title. Overall, I find modern permissiveness of this sort to be offensive and disappointing.
Here is my example of "real world racism". Although I grew up poor, there was a short period in my life when a middle class Christian couple wanted to adopt my sister and I from our mother. My mother strung them along for awhile to get some money. Part of this meant that for the first time in my life, I attended a school for an entire year. It was a ritzy private school, still the fanciest you can find in San Jose, called Harker Academy. These days it is called "The Harker School" and tuition is $41,000/yr for K-5th grade. At that school, in 1973-1974 when I was there, we had black students. One of them was an enormously obese girl. I was so surprised by her size that when I first saw her, I stared for a moment and she noticed. "Haven't you ever seen a black person before?" She yelled at me, obviously irritated. "No" my eight year old self replied. "I've never seen anyone so fat." And as it happens, that was exactly what was going on. Her size was more interesting than her skin color, and I had no problem, not even a single thought about the race of any of the kids at the school, most of whom were from wealthy families.
Outside of that example of "obesism" instead of "racism" I'm hard-pressed to find examples of white people behaving in a racist way toward black people. What I do remember was frequent commentary about migrant workers from Mexico taking jobs from Americans, and encouragement from all races for Caucasians to avoid their natural inclination toward racism, which is itself racist.
"Alleviating suffering": The easiest way to do this is to end racism. What that means is to give up the illusion that modern day America is a cesspool of anti-black, anti-Hispanic racism. Do that, and people from those racial backgrounds will have less reason to be resentful, less reason to feel like victims, less reason to feel defensive, and more reason to focus on positive aspects of their lives. At the same time, Caucasians will feel less threatened by crime because crime would go down as people stop thinking of working out their resentments on each other and work instead on becoming productive members of society. My opinion is that the media is more responsible for racism in America than any other entity. They create the illusion, nurse it, encourage it, and applaud when people buy the lie. It is a lie though. The sooner people realize that, the sooner the issue and the problem will die.
Police brutality/racism: This is an utter fiction. Crime stats demonstrate this so well that it isn't even a close argument. How anyone has managed to construe them to mean anything else only shows how delusional, dishonest, and biased some people can be.
People You've Known Personally: It is unavoidable in America for Caucasians to meet African Americans, or "blacks" (I really dislike all these race terms). I've known many myself. Some were friends, some were not. I knew more when I lived in Europe than in America and had more friends among them. The biggest difference I saw was that they weren't constantly bombarded by media telling them that everyone they saw was a racist who wanted to do them harm. As a consequence, I sensed none of the suspicion one sometimes (but not always) finds in the US. There was no real difference as far as the range of personalities is concerned, but in the first few moments of meeting someone, a black person in the US seems to be more likely to have their guard up than in Europe. Once that moment passes, no difference. That said, to get past that moment, presumably one must first pass the "not a racist" test. These days, I am very concerned with the rhetoric we're hearing that states, "all whites are racist. If they deny it, that's because they are racist." All that does is make it impossible to pass the test, thus never freeing oneself of the suspicion and bad feelings that go along with it, on both sides.
My Experience: Many have asked the question but I'm afraid the answer may be disappointing. The question falls into the "when did you stop beating your wife?" category because it contains a powerful but false assumption. There is a widespread belief that people who live through the kind of circumstances I did have to be particularly hardy to get through them, that they had to be miserable, frightened, alone, etcetera, making it something of a miracle if they survive to adulthood and manage to enter the middle class. The fact is that I didn't realize that other people would think I had a hard life until after I was an adult and met people who hadn't had similar experiences. Yes, I was scared the two times I had a gun waved in my face, when my mother tried to deliberately crash into oncoming traffic on the highway, when we'd move in the middle of the night because she thought the CIA was drugging our food, or any of the other occasions when my life was actually in danger or it seemed that way. Eating food scraps brought home after my (very attractive but mentally ill) mother would come home from a date was normal, not extraordinary. Diving bodily into a Goodwill donation bin in the middle of the night to get clothes because we couldn't afford the nickel price tags during the day seemed wrong to me, so I let my sister do it. I didn't like incidents like that but I didn't think of myself as underprivileged because I experienced them.
On the flip side, I also had a lot of fun as a kid. I loved school. I studied hard. I couldn't talk to my friends again after we moved, which was often, so I made the most of it while I was there. I did get beaten up fairly regularly but that, as far as I was concerned, was an inconvenience of childhood that many besides myself had to go through. My overriding principle has been to be honest in my interactions with people and with myself. That always earned me the respect of the people I respected and that was the one thing I craved more than anything else. I wanted people to know I was a responsible young man and I was. That, and my comic book collection, were about all I really cared about. And then my mom forced me to sell the collection in 1979 to pay for a move to Las Vegas, on the heels of a police encounter that I think might have split up the family had we stayed. I was angry about that for awhile, but these things pass away. I had a dream once where I was shown all the events in my life. Among them, it showed all these things from when I was young. According to the dream, those events were all planned for my life as a way to teach me to be less attached to things. It made sense, making it hard to resent those events now.
Getting back to the main issue: I see the way the media is touting the Floyd story, the Trayvon Williams story, Tawany Brawley, and others, to be intentionally deceptive. More than that, dangerous. They are doing the equivalent of screaming "fire" in a crowded theater. I wish it would stop. Without media encouragement, I think race relations would improve quickly.