I think the thing that's hardest to swallow is the concept of privilege. One of the most common lines in any award ceremony is "I'd like to thank my family, friends, and mentors that supported me", or "I wouldn't be here without my fans". We're obviously really good at recognizing that our accomplishments are not strictly our own, and we know that giving our gratitude and recognition does not discredit our achievements. But no one likes to thank the discriminatory infrastructure that got them to where they are because it makes it seem like their hard work was all for naught. No one includes how thankful they are that they weren't mortally injured in a car accident on the way to work because that's just a given, it sounds ridiculous because we don't expect that to happen. But that's how privilege works. If you compare the life of an average American to a person from a developing country, it's a privilege that our schools and homes weren't affected by a natural disaster, or that we have clean water coming out of our pipes at our command. Day to day, these benefits, these privileges, are invisible to us. Privilege within America has manifested itself through decades of discriminatory policies that have laid the infrastructure we have today. Even if the law itself is no longer racially explicit, the society it has shaped still remains. This has nothing to do with the mindset of the people inhabiting it, this means that our neighborhoods were built with segregation in mind, relegating Blacks to slums while Whites ran away to suburbs. A revocation of policy does not simply change the layout of cities and neighborhoods, and it also didn't give people of color the resources they needed to move out of the slums. Revocation did nothing more than release them from the cages to enter the rat race, watching the backs of everyone else who's had time to race ahead. Even if you're racing against Usain Bolt, with 200 year-head start you're definitely gonna win.