Unfortunately in game theory, if one side always chooses cooperate, they will lose. In racism, if minorities continue to choose to cooperate while police continue to defect by murdering, maiming, and acting as terrorists in the community, then ethnic minorities will never improve their situation. It's just math. If you want to blame someone, blame Moloch. There's a specific meaning to Moloch in the rationalist community, but it's sufficient to think of him as the ancient god of why we can't have nice things. He exists, and we can't.
There's empirical evidence to back this up too. I read a paper back in college that social protest movements are more successful if they are violent. IIRC, the success rate was improved by 5-10%. Part of the effect, one could argue, is that the protest is more deeply felt among more people if some of the participants are willing to be violent. But of course, violence makes the political authorities take notice, because it threatens their control and wealth. If they're not threatened in some way, they are less likely to take action.
(Aside: what you never ever want to do in a social movement is to threaten mass violence and then not carry through on your threat. That just makes everyone hate you. Even with the smallish sample size of movements the effect was huge. Case in point, the German American Bund.)
There's empirical evidence to back this up too. I read a paper back in college that social protest movements are more successful if they are violent. IIRC, the success rate was improved by 5-10%. Part of the effect, one could argue, is that the protest is more deeply felt among more people if some of the participants are willing to be violent. But of course, violence makes the political authorities take notice, because it threatens their control and wealth. If they're not threatened in some way, they are less likely to take action.
(Aside: what you never ever want to do in a social movement is to threaten mass violence and then not carry through on your threat. That just makes everyone hate you. Even with the smallish sample size of movements the effect was huge. Case in point, the German American Bund.)
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto