So, there’s this YouTuber named Roaming Millennial. I’ve ignored her videos for awhile, but it’s time to take down an embarrassing piece of sophomoric scholarship that should be discarded. Plus, it states some oft-repeated untruths that I’ve been wanting to debunk for awhile. So even if you don’t watch Roaming Millenial’s videos (like most the world, I suppose), this should be relevant. It’s not a complete breakdown of all the many ways she’s wrong, but it gives a couple pieces of evidence that should show, for good, that she simply did not know what she was talking about in that video.

For the next few minutes, I’d like you to forget that I often get branded a “Social Justice Warrior.” I never claimed the title, although when I speak about black people I’m often ascribed it. Hell, I used to be on the side of saying that racism was pretty much over. What changed, in addition to life experience, is education.

Anyways, enough about that. Here is her video, for reference.

First, she says that although there was oppression in the past against black people, there is no oppression now.

None. Zero. Notta. Black people are NOT treated, today, unjustly or cruelly on account of their race, at all.

That’s her claim. Now, a word to the wise. Anti-SJWs, don’t be deceived by her high “like” ratio and go out arguing to your more-informed friends that there is no evidence of unjust treatment to African Americans. Because there is. In every segment of society — no, not according to my personal opinion. According to people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about, regardless of the color of their skin, because they’ve studied this.

You’re far better off saying that the injustice isn’t extreme enough to worry about, or that we live in a cruel world and black people need to just suck it up. I’m trying to help you here. Really, that’s a much easier argument to make — at least, when you’re not preaching to the choir. I kinda wish I was arguing against that argument, to be honest with you, because I kinda enjoy a more challenging debate.

But here…she’s just making it too easy.

And then she seeks to “prove” it next, when she talks about prison rates. She says that people who are concerned about racism point out that black people are much more likely to be incarcerated than white people. But, she points out, black people are more likely to commit crimes than white people. So it’s probably due to their propensity to be criminals, and not due to racism.

She’s wrong. Just flat-out wrong.

Here is a study done in 2013 by Yale (not a random YouTuber; an actual respected university) explaining that once you control for other factors, black people get worse sentences for the same crimes:

After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, sentences for black male arrestees diverge substantially from those of white male arrestees (by around 10% on average)…. we find that prosecutors file mandatory minimums twice as often against black men as against comparable white men.

Also in 2013, the US Sentencing Commission, a bipartisan, independent government organization (organized under the judicial branch) formed under Ronald Reagan (probably a better source than Roaming Millennial. Just maybe.) made a report and stated:

Sentences for black males were 19.5 percent longer than those for similarly situated white males between December 2007 and September 2011, the most recent period covered in the report. The commission also found that black males were 25 percent less likely than whites to receive a sentence below the sentencing guidelines. A separate analysis of the data that excluded sentences of probation showed the same pattern, although the racial disparity was less pronounced. Black men on average were given sentences 14.5 percent longer than whites. [Emphasis added]

Black people who have the same histories as white people tend to be — even in the 2010s — about 10% more likely to get a bad prison sentence.

That’s unjust. That’s oppression. “For oppression to happen, black people would have to be incarcerated unjustly at a higher rate than other races,” she says.

(Nevermind that she changed the definition midway through her video from “”prolonged cruel OR unjust treatment or control” to ONLY “unjust treatment” — just a bit of a pet peeve there that doesn’t really matter…anyways, moving on.)

In addition, if you look at the number of prisoners actually proven to be innocent who have been freed due to DNA evidence, 62% of them happen to be black, in spite of the fact that black people make up 35% of the prison population. Come on, man. Being convicted when you’re innocent is the dictionary definition of oppression. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…more cases are being discovered.

Last year, for example, there were 166 exonerations — vastly disproportionately African American. According to the Innocence Project:

We see racial disparities in exonerations for all types of crime, but the disparities are especially stark for drug cases. About half of the people exonerated for non-drug related crimes in 2016 were African-American. In contrast, roughly two-thirds of those exonerated for drug possession or sale in 2016 were African American (41/61), including 71% of the guilty-plea drug exonerations in Harris County, where African Americans are 20% of the population.

So this is what we have: black people, when compared to white people with the same histories, are more likely to have longer sentences, and all the evidence we have suggests that they are more likely to be convicted as guilty when they are innocent. This gets more damning when you dig into the data:

[Innocence Project Policy Director] Stephen Saloom said, including subtle factors that subconsciously affect who we perceive as guilty or innocent and how people conduct investigations. These human factors mean race has an impact in our courts. “When considering stereotypes and the disproportionate minority contact in the system, we have a greater propensity to think people of color may have done something,” he said. Cross-racial identifications have also played a role in sending a disproportionate number of people of color to prison for crimes they didn’t commit, Saloom said. Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA evidence, and in more than half of the misidentification cases, the witness and perpetrator were of difference races.

I…know that it might be offensive to you to contradict Roaming Millennial, anti-SJWs but in my humble personal opinion…being imprisoned or being put on death row for a crime you did not commit, at an unfair rate based on your race, is unjust.

Am I trying to get you to feel sorry for black people?

No, not here. All I’m trying to show you is that, when it comes to speaking about race, Roaming Millennial simply does not know what she is talking about. You shouldn’t trust her. She does shoddy research and she’s horrendously inaccurate, and ten minutes of Googling would show you that she’s just full of it. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. She’s an arrogantly, aggressively ignorant naive person who should not be trusted in the slightest with commentary on the state of racism in America, and it pisses me off that so many people are eating her lies up. Because they’re lies. They’re not true. You can think of me what you like; I know a lot on the anti-SJW hate my guts ever since I started calling out their Dear Leaders on their ignorant remarks. Call me what you want. Hate me all you want. But you know what?

I’m still right.

Now, let’s talk about the other thing she says.

She puts up two charts showing that Asian-Americans make more than even white people. And there’s anti-Asian prejudice, right? So obviously African Americans are not oppressed. If the Asian Americans did it, so can African Americans.

*sigh*

This is one we’ve heard before. It started to become popular in the early 1960s as an argument against desegregation. White people were like, “There’s no racism. Maybe in the days of slavery; not now. Asians have been able to get by with segregation laws intact. Obviously black people can, too.”

Maybe you’re gung-ho, like, “Hell ya. Whey were they crying about segregation? It’s obviously about lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

Here’s the deal: Most Asian-Americans are first- or second-generation immigrants who had to come here on very high standards to begin with. Many of them come from (in order of population) China, the Philippines, and India. These countries have very, very poor people in them. I mean, the average income in India is $1, 590 (as of 2015). Per year (in the Philippines it’s $3,550 per year, and in China, it’s $7,900 per year). So they thinking that their culture makes them rich is false.

And yet, Indian-Americans have the highest median income in the United States, at just over $100,000 a year. Why the discrepancy?

Well, 87% of Indian-Americans are born OUTSIDE the United States. Most, presumably, in India.

The reason they are successful is that India, which has a population four times that of the United States, has some people that, like any area that size, are way above the norm. People who earn MUCH more than $1, 590 dollars a year. And they are really the only ones who can come here.

You see, in order to come here as a resident, you have to have a petition that is filed by “a qualified relative or a potential employer at a USCIS office in the United States.” So you have to have a family member here OR you have to already have an employer who is willing to take you in, and THEN you have to go through a horrendously long, expensive, time-consuming immigration process. I mean, it usually takes you 12-18 months to get a green card if you’re coming for employment, and 5-10 years to get a green card if you get it through a close relative. And that employment one is tough:

If you are a recognized researcher or professor, a multinational executive or manager, or someone with extraordinary ability, you are generally in the first preference of employer sponsored immigration. If you have a PhD or Master’s degree and have exceptional skills in business, the arts, or sciences, you may qualify for a green card under the second preference. If you are a skilled worker or professional, you may qualify for immigration under third preference. This category also covers workers who require less than two years of experience, training, or education. Other workers may have to wait five years or even more to get their green card. Religious workers and other specialized workers belong in the fourth preference of immigration while investors are in the fifth preference.

These aren’t average Indians. These are the ones who were already at the top of a society in which the average income is $1,590 — about the price it takes just to get a round-trip plane ticket between India and the US. And this goes for ALL immigrants to the United States.

And that’s not all. Their employer has to pay a lot of money for them to come here:

A study for the National Foundation for American Policy estimated that to hire someone on an H-1B visa, a U.S. employer has to pay about $2,500 in legal fees; a $1,500 training fee; a $1,000 “premium processing” fee; a $500 antifraud fee; a $190 immigration service fee; around $125 in additional incidental costs; and a $100 visa fee. That totals almost $6,000. Complicated immigration cases can cost eligible applicants $10,000 or more in legal fees alone.

So your employer has to be willing to spend about $6,000 on you to for you to come here, minimum. Now, I don’t think it’s too much to assert to even the most hardcore anti-SJW that if an employer is paying $6,000 to hire you, as an Indian immigrant, for a job, you’re probably pretty well off.

Plus there are all the other costs — you have to have a place to stay once you get here, you have to have the means to move from your home country, etc. It’s extraordinarily expensive…especially coming from a country in which the average people make $1,590 a year. But in a country that has four times the population of the United States, some people are going to make it. And the people that DO make it are usually ALREADY in the stratosphere of the upper class…and comparing them to the Asians already here is really, really, really unfair. And again — 87% of Indian Americans are born outside of the United States. And that’s not even including the second generation, which often has many of the benefits of the prior generation (just like Trump’s getting ahead probably had something to do with his “small loan of a million dollars” from his dad, which was actually at least $9 million — but who’s counting, right? Anyways, I digress…).

Now, you may be thinking, “Yeah, but what about those who have been in the United States for generations?” If so, glad you asked. The New Yorker gives a good summary:

There are now, in a sense, two Asian Americas: one formed by five centuries of systemic racism, and another, more genteel version, constituted in the aftermath of the 1965 law. These two Asian Americas float over and under each other like tectonic plates, often clanging discordantly. So, while Chinese-Americans and Indian-Americans are among the most prosperous groups in the country, Korean-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Filipino-Americans have lower median personal earnings than the general population.

There it is. Those who immigrated are, as aforementioned, setting off the curve for everyone else who did not. And, furthermore, those who are here due to five centuries of racism, who have ancestors here — which are in the minority — are still struggling. And because of the “model minority” myth….they don’t get the help they so desperately need. Racist or ignorant assholes are so determined to uphold the model minority myth that they run roughshod over the Asian-Americans who have been here for many generations and are struggling with intergenerational poverty, and instead cater to much more recent immigrants. And they do this to tell these Asian Americans and blacks that they are fine.

This is a major error.

The annoying thing is that Roaming Millennial either does not know this or is intentionally ignoring it. These aren’t small mistakes. They’re huge. A bit of research, a bit of thought, would make it completely obvious to her, and it would also uncover the fact that Asian Americans were often considered “white” during Jim Crow, and thus did not have nearly the same socioeconomic disadvantages as blacks in this country (which made the argument that desegregation was unneeded because Asians were doing OK even more bull in the 1960s).

And yet, in spite of this lack of knowledge, she is preaching to her choir in such a patronizingly ignorant tone that…it really grates on my nerves. Ugh.

So, my hope is that some listeners of Roaming Millennial are reading this. I am, frankly, appalled by her shoddy research. When it comes to race issues, stop listening to her. Please. Not just because she’s an anti-SJW, but because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Thanks for reading.

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