I believe in integration (not to be confused with assimilation). Communities need to be brought together so that we can support one another. The entire point of having a nation, or any social organization at all, is so that we can support one another. This is especially important for disenfranchised and underserved people and groups. Institutions like education and medicine, as well as housing initiatives and transportation, need to be built with integration as a conscious and intentional design goal.
When we see a bus that has crashed on the side of the road, and people are bleeding and broken and dying, we don't throw cash out the window at them and tell ourselves that it's better to let the community of bus passengers take care of themselves; we stop the car and get out to help. I don't know why we expect that communities that have been decimated by slavery or brutal colonialism and attempted genocides to be set up to go it alone with some economic support.
I also believe that groups that have been historically disadvantaged need special attention. Not because poverty and trauma and every imaginable hardship doesn't visit itself on white people or other more privileged groups. But disadvantaged people from these groups are already integrated into a larger web of support systems. That special attention might take a number of different forms, but I think trauma is the elephant in the room. We need to work hard on getting public servants (police, teachers, medical personal, et cetera) trauma informed to better serve communities with high incidences of trauma, and we need to poor some resources into helping people process their trauma, one person at a time, so that we can stop the intergenerational trauma cycle.
These sorts of things mean really getting into the mix of things, and they really do take a lot of political will, which is different from intent. All parties intend for people to have better lives, I think. But does any party have the will to suggest that happens in the backyards of its supporters and doners? There's not been a lot of that on display, I don't think.
